Good morning. It’s Tuesday, and I’m reading about the steepest street in California. Onto the five USC, Los Angeles and California stories you need to know for today.

1.

Prepare for a kitten boom. Every summer, warm weather sends stray cats “into heat,” spurring a wave of new births and legions of feral kittens. The Humane Society of America likens it to a “natural disaster.” An Oakland animal shelter director called it “draining.” But things aren’t likely to get any better: Experts have noted that kitten season seems to be starting earlier and lasting longer as climate change causes milder winters. In LA — which is home to millions of feral cats known to wreak havoc on local biodiversity on top of the headache they cause for animal shelters — that change only exacerbates a perennial problem.

Sachi Mulkey / Grist

2.

Fresno is leading California’s population growth, but for an unexpected reason: It’s simply losing fewer people than the rest of the state. While the Fresno area’s population grew by about 0.4% from July 2022 to July 2023, the state’s overall numbers fell by 0.2% — no doubt driven by losses in LA and the Bay Area. The Central Valley city also managed to tally a slightly higher birth rate than more populous areas of California. “We’re one of the last places in California where you can buy a home between $400,000 and $500,000 that’s about 2,000 square feet,” one real estate agent said.

Christian Leonard / San Francisco Chronicle

3.

Housing advocates are homing in on one of their long-time foes: the California Coastal Commission, a state agency that scrutinizes anything built, demolished, dug up or fixed along the state’s 840-mile coastline. The commission tends to be stingy with the permits it issues in an effort to prevent the coast from becoming overdeveloped. But Democratic lawmakers want to erode its power. One bill would exempt certain kinds of dense housing with units for lower income residents from the commission’s oversight. Another would make an exception for accessory dwelling units. And yet another would exempt a broad swath of San Francisco entirely.

Ben Christopher / CalMatters

4.

It’s called the “LA left turn,” and it’s notoriously dangerous. Imagine: You’re about to make an unprotected left on a busy street. When the light turns green, you slowly creep into the middle of the intersection, signal and wait for oncoming traffic to clear. Then the light turns red — and you floor it, swinging wildly into the turn so you don’t get T-boned by perpendicular traffic. The move actually isn’t illegal: It’s just risky. A study in San Francisco found that in 2019, 4 in 10 traffic deaths were caused by left turns. But it’s a hard problem to fix. For one, left-turn signals are expensive to install. And many LA streets are too narrow to accommodate long lines of left-turners. 

Paula Mejía / SFGate

5.

When the weather turns warm in a California mountain town, all hell breaks loose. Black bears descend on the small village of Pine Mountain Club. They smash windows, tear out doors and rip out roof tiles. They demolish cars to get to cookie crumbs between the seats. They sneak into homes to pull old pizza out of refrigerators. They even defecate on the counters. Blame urban growth, wildfires and drought for forcing more human-bear interactions. But also, maybe blame the people who keep feeding them. “I love bears; they’re just big puppy dogs,” said one resident known to feed the bears. “Getting along with these critters is the right thing to do. It pleases the Lord.”

Louis Sahagún / Los Angeles Times

Correction: USC’s women’s basketball team will play Texas A&M Corpus Christi on Saturday, not Sunday as I wrote in yesterday’s newsletter.