CHEERS: to Mary King and her construction crew from Luck Brothers for helping relocate a colony of feral cats before beginning a project at the end of Dock Street in Plattsburgh. The building of a new waterfront park was planned for an area that was home to some wild cats in a large pile of debris there. City Engineer Kevin Farrington was most helpful in suggesting places to move the houses and talked with Luck Brothers about the safest approach to bulldozing the debris to avoid harming the cats. King and crew members helped to move the houses to a nearby site, where the cats would be safe and comfortable. Dave MacIntosh, a retired Air Force master sergeant and postal worker, has spent a lot of time over the years looking after area cats that are out on their own without the security of a home. He attests to the compassion shown by both Farrington and Luck Brothers in seeing to the safe, least intrusive removal of the cats' homes. The stereotypical view of municipalities and construction crews depicts them as uncaring people who are irked that their work is being held up by such considerations. It's nice to know this is not the case in Plattsburgh.

JEERS: to people who use the City of Plattsburgh sewer system as a depository for fallen leaves this time of year. A reader observed that, on her way to work one recent day, she saw some workers cleaning up a parking lot at a restaurant in the city, using leaf-blowers. They walked around, pushing the dirt and leaves into a pile and then, instead of sweeping the pile up and disposing of it, they just blew it into the street. It wasn't a particularly windy day, and she was irked that the dirt and leaves were just going to find their way to somebody else's yard. In other words, the workers were simply transferring the problem and the work to the next property owner along the street. Moreover, "to expend twice the resources to pick up one mess is bad math," is the way she put it. "It's also bad citizenship and unneighborly." The truth is that the sewers aren't designed to take care of people's leaf problems, either. Consigning them to a curbside to await the street sweeper is not a good answer. Bag the leaves and send them to the landfill for compost. The city will take them away. It's not too much to ask to tend to this annual chore -- in fact, raking leaves can be a good family outing and healthful exercise.