People have abandoned hundreds of cats on a deserted Brazilian island. Officials aren’t sure how to save them.

But the officials, looking at the squalor of the cat dwellings, said the situation was more complicated than social media absolutism. “It’s terrible,” said Fernanda Porto, the city’s environmental sub-secretary. “Are we going to let the animals die of hunger, or are we going to keep on giving food, which will only incentivize more abandonment?”