Willets Point Development will doom longstanding Shea Stadium strays cat colony, activists warn

The Willets Point project is intended to revitalize the downtrodden area of central Queens, but activists say developers have neglected to address one key community with squatters’ rights: the so-called “Shea Stadium strays.”Living in the dust of the Iron Triangle just steps from Citi Field, a colony of grimy and malnourished cats have called the neighborhood home for nearly a century.As many as 100 felines have already been pushed out of the fields and into the shrinking auto body sector, which is expected to be the next chunk of land leveled to make room for the incoming soccer stadium, retail haven and residential space.Further displacement would mean marching them to certain doom, animal activists warn.“They have nowhere to go but to their death.Nowhere to go,” Regina Massaro, the founder of Spay Neuter Intervention Project (SNIP) NYC.With a 48-pack of Friskies cans in one hand and a gallon of water in the other, Massaro led The Post on a tour of the squalor Wednesday afternoon, just hours before thousands of baseball fans gorged on hot dogs and beer as they watched the Mets destroy the Red Sox, 8-3.The contrast couldn’t better illustrate the catastrophe, Massaro said — the animals will soon be pushed out into the polluted Flushing Creek or residential blocks as the multi-million development continues to eat up their home.“No one cares.

These animals have no one to speak for them but me,” Massaro, 74, of Maspeth, said as she picked up a discarded slice of Sicilian pizza, ripped it into bite-sized pieces and tossed it back to the cats.“I get to leave this place and go home.

These cats have to stay here.”Stray cats have run amok in Willets Point for nearly 100 years and even carved out shelter in Shea Stadium when it was erected in 1964 — with one famously scampering across the Cubs dugout during a 1969 game, cursing the Chicago team and propelling the Metsies to their first World Series title.The cat population has since boomed, but scar...