CCT Article: Feral Cat Pop. Breeds Fondness and Frustration

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whimsicaldeb
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CCT Article: Feral Cat Pop. Breeds Fondness and Frustration

Post by whimsicaldeb » April 30th, 2006, 3:51 pm

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http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cct ... 465894.htm

Sun, Apr. 30, 2006

Feral cat population breeds fondness -- and frustration
LAFAYETTE: Backers say neuter-release program works; critics say cats harm environment
By Tom Lochner
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Every morning, Estelle Breitmayer walks a trail along a creek in Lafayette carrying containers of cat food.

"Come on, Lizzie," Breitmayer coaxed one day last week. Presently, a pair of triangular ears, then two yellowish eyes emerged from behind a makeshift plywood cat shelter equipped with a blanket. "That's Big Boy," Breitmayer said. Lizzie followed close behind.

Breitmayer left some food at another feeding station for Timmy, the colony elder, who has fed here for 11 years. Another cat, Honey, crosses the creek daily over a log Breitmayer and her husband placed after a winter storm.

"They've all been spayed and neutered," said Breitmayer, president of the nonprofit Feral Cat Foundation, an eight-year-old nonprofit group with about 80 members in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Under the TNR program -- for Trap, Neuter, Return -- volunteers catch feral cats, bring them to a veterinarian for neutering or spaying and release them into a maintained colony

Breitmayer feeds five cats here; once there were 25. She sees it as a splendid example of what cat rescuers call a "managed colony," and a vindication of TNR.

She is sensitive to critics' concerns that feral cats decimate wildlife but believes they don't know the whole truth about feral cat colony management.

* * *

Doug Tokes, a lifelong Californian, has a different perspective on feral cats -- and the free-roaming pet cats that spawn some of them.

"In my 62 years here, I've seen the whole ecology of this state go downhill," said Tokes, who lives on two once-rural acres in Antioch surrounded by housing today.

"When's the last time you saw any quail around?" said Tokes. "They used to be really abundant out here. They're ground-nesters, so the feral cat population is wiping them out."

Tokes has a cat, who stays indoors, "but we have four or five cats on our property, hunting."

Tokes contacted the Times two months ago in response to an article on the Contra Costa County Animal Services Department's first spay-and-neuter clinic for feral cats. He thinks TNR -- and subsequent feeding -- is an insane idea and that cat lovers are either in denial or else complicit.

"What the cat people are doing is deciding what lives and what dies," Tokes said. "They love cats, so they decide the cats should live at the expense of the wildlife."

* * *

Cats kill hundreds of millions of birds annually in the United States, said Jimm Edgar of the Mount Diablo Audubon Society, citing an article in Birders World titled "Cats -- they're soft and cuddly. They're America's favorite pets. They're also natural-born killers."

"Domestic cat attacks ... (have) contributed catastrophically to the decimation of certain avian species, especially some of our most beloved songbirds in North America," the article asserts. The American Bird Conservancy concurs with the hundreds-of-millions figure.

Dairne Ryan of Fix Our Ferals, another cat rescue group, challenges it. "You can find studies that counter that," she said. "We would all like to see better statistics, but feral cats defy statistics."

Many birds are killed not by feral cats but by pet cats whose owners let them outside in the morning and bring them in at night, Ryan said.

* * *

Not just the number of bird kills but the size of the feral cat population are in dispute. Tracey Stevens-Martin, humane education coordinator for county Animal Services, estimated Contra Costa's at "easily half a million" earlier this year. Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, uses a formula based on human population and cat ownership patterns to estimate Contra Costa's feral cat population at 100,000.

Linda McCormick, founder of the group Fix Our Ferals, has said that habitat loss because of development affects bird populations more than predation by cats does.

That's hardly an argument absolving the cats, says Tokes, the Antioch resident.

"It's bad enough to take away the habitat," Tokes said, "but when you introduce a predator into what's left of the habitat, it's worse."

"They kill butterflies, baby squirrels, anything that moves; they kill amphibians and reptiles," he continued. "There are so many animals on the endangered species list that weren't when I was growing up."

Breitmayer sees a more balanced scenario of cat-bird predation, with feral cats, especially kittens, often falling prey to raptors.

Doug Bell, wildlife program manager for East Bay Regional Park District, said some feral cats are indeed taken by eagles and great horned owls but that overall the raptors cannot be viewed as a "control mechanism."

"Feral cats clearly have an impact on the population of wild birds," Bell said. They are "at the interface of urban and suburban areas bordering natural lands," including watershed lands and parks.

The cats prey on ground-nesting birds, especially California quail, and other low-nesting birds, for instance white crown sparrow and California towhee, Bell said. Also, "they're great lizard eaters" and will go after insects such as praying mantises, he said.

Feeding the cats makes the problem worse because it attracts more cats, Bell said. And even some well-fed, well-loved, pampered cats with good homes still hunt daily, he said.

The park district policy on feral cats, when they become a serious problem, is to live-trap them and take them to county animal shelters, Bell said.

* * *

Once they are in the animal shelter, feral cats, are often euthanized. Cat rescuers call the process "Trap and Kill" and insist it doesn't work, whereas TNR does.

The theory behind TNR is that releasing sterile cats keeps the population down as more of the carrying capacity of a given area is occupied by nonreproducing cats. Eventually, the population will decline, the theory goes -- as happened in Breitmayer's Lafayette colony.

Detractors of TNR say new cats will take the place of the ones that die until the area reaches its carrying capacity -- or more, if people keep feeding the cats.

TNR must be a sustained effort to work, said Ryan, of Fix Our Ferals.

"When you rely on people who feel compassion for the cats and educate them not just to feed a starving cat but to spay and neuter it," she said, "you're going to begin to address the problem."

Stevens-Martin, of Animal Services, said TNR indeed is controversial but she believes the cat rescue groups are a big asset. "To provide a balance for animal control and humane behavior, animal shelters need to have an alliance with rescue groups."

The groups foster and socialize cats and provide financial help for spaying and neutering. And they save the lives of animals that would otherwise be euthanized, Stevens-Martin said.

* * *

According to the Humane Society, a free-roaming cat's estimated average life span is less than three years, compared with 15-18 years for the average indoor cat.

The American Bird Conservancy's "Cats Indoors" campaign, as well as the Humane Society's "Safe Cats" campaign, advocate keeping cats indoors -- for their own safety as well as the birds' and other wildlife's.

A drive through any East Bay neighborhood, where cats scurry on lawns and under cars and lounge on stoops and porches, suggests many residents are not heeding Cats Indoors' call.

Cat rescue people and wildlife advocates find some common ground in the shared view that much of the feral cat problem could be eliminated if humans acted more responsibly and that education can accomplish a lot.

Reach Tom Lochner at 510-262-2760 or tlochner@cctimes.com.

TO LEARN MORE

Feral Cat Foundation http://www.feralcatfoundation.org
Mount Diablo Audubon Society http://www.diabloaudubon.com/
Contra Costa County Animal Services humane education department 925-335-8345
Fix Our Ferals http://www.fixourferals.org
Cats Indoors http://www.abcbirds.org/cats/
Safe Cats http://www.hsus.org/ace/13960


--end article

TNR programs work, that's a fact. And they are a part of the solution. So is keeping cats indoors - and that's that part that's missing the most, at least in our area. In our neighborhood, it's not so much the feral cats that are bringing down our local towhee population; it's our bored, wandering neighborhood cats - that are let out to roam in the day and are taken in again at night.

This article will help, because it will get people to listen, consider keeping their cats in more than out. For the most part, people really are kind-hearted, just uninformed. And while they like to keep their animals free (and not have to clean the litter box as often), they don't always look ahead or consider what their actions my do beyond their immediate environment. I'm guilty of that myself.

In fact, when I had cats, I had three and all three were daytime roamers. I don't have cats any longer, and needing to keep them indoors is a issue, but for me personally, not the main issue. It's more personal then that. When Gidget died, a bit of my heart died with her and I've not wanted another cat since then. The needing to keep them indoors, and what/how will that effect my being home-caring birds are just excuses. I know how I am, if I truly wanted to have another cat again, I'd find the way to make it all work. Excuse me, I digress.

Anyway, saw this article and thought you, others, might find it interesting as well.

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abcrystcats
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Post by abcrystcats » May 28th, 2006, 12:23 am

NO, NO, NO.


Felis catus is not an American native. It is a native of Asia and perhaps Europe. The European wild cat is amazingly similar to our domestic cats, but totally untameable.

We brought the cats here with us when we came to this continent.

And I hate to point it out, but do I hear any immigrants or descendants of immigrants to this country suggesting that we should be exterminated or shipped back to our original countries? After all, we have nearly decimated the Native American Indian population with our predations, haven't we?

My point is, the feral cats are our responsibility.

And if they don't have a right to be here because they are not indigenous, then neither do we, so let's not be hypocritical about it.

As for TNR, it works because it is, actually, a type of extermination. It prevents breeding. Cats live out their lives, do not reproduce, and then die.

The usual TNR program includes some medical care for the cats, as well as regular feeding and a decent period of recovery. The neutered cats leave captivity stronger and healthier than they've ever been before in their lives, and after that it only gets better for them.

Without their breeding capability, and with regular feedings, the cats lose their scrawniness. Running around out there in the open, they get muscles. Their eyes get bright and their fur fills out. They learn quickly that food is handed out in a defined number of given spots, and these strong, vigorous animals carefully stake out a territory. They become patrollers discouraging other scrawny yowlers from infiltrating their colony and producing more kittens. If a cat does succeed in breaking into the territory, he or she is quickly identified by the human caretakers and given the same snip-snip.

Neutered cats police their own area and naturally hold down cat population, all by themselves.

As time goes on and TNR becomes more widespread, fewer feral cats will be breeders, and those cats that receive TNR will automatically keep others out. There will be a gradual decline in feral cat population over time. Neutered cats do die, after all, and they don't leave others to take their place.

That's why it works.

Taking out your gun and shooting a bunch of feral kitties doesn't work, because even if you get them all, it leaves a niche for other wild cats to come and fill. Think about it. Wild cats are naturally attracted to urban centers and to any place where they think they can find food. If you kill the cats, other cats are going to be attracted to the same place, and in time you'll have another mess of cats to kill off.

And no matter how good a shot you are, you're never going to get them all. Cats are nocturnal. They are wily, they are sneaky. And they breed like rabbits. You can shoot cats till your trigger finger falls off, but if that's your extermination program, there will always be more cats to shoot, guaranteed.

There is one more thing that we need to do if we are serious about eliminating the feral cat population. We need to pass two laws. One that obligates cat owners to either have their pet cats neutered or spayed within a certain period of time ( and pay a heavy fine if they don't) or pay to register their cats as breeders. The other to fine owners who let their cats outside, unless the cat is on a leash or in a pen.

As for this:

"Cats kill hundreds of millions of birds annually in the United States, said Jimm Edgar of the Mount Diablo Audubon Society, citing an article in Birders World titled "Cats -- they're soft and cuddly. They're America's favorite pets. They're also natural-born killers."

"hundreds-of-millions" ??? I'm not even sure that's a real number.
No one can tell you how many birds cats kill. There's no way to measure it. Think of a way to accurately measure how many birds cats kill and I'll send you $25.00.

There's no question that cats kill birds, but there's also no question that since cats can't fly, they prefer prey that is a little closer to the ground. That means mice, rats, shrews, bugs.

Cats do kill birds, but it takes a little bit more skill on their part than it takes the average great white hunter to go out and bring one down with a gun. Think if you had to leap straight up in the air, contort your body and catch the bird with one upstretched claw. That's pretty much how it's done, and it isn't surprising that most of the birds get away, even after getting caught.

Starving feral cats have much better things to do with their limited energy supply than go on a highly specialized, skill-based hunt for feathered flying creatures. Therefore, I generally agree with the article when it said that pet cats probably bring down more birds than ferals do. Ferals have to eat, and don't want to waste a lot of time before the next meal, so mice do very nicely.

What I find ironic about this is that our relationship with cats is all about US. It wasn't too long ago that farmers were grateful to the feral cats for keeping down the rodent population near the barns and in the fields. Thank GOD for feral cats, or the farmers would have mostly starved. The cats saved the grain and kept the milk from getting spoiled by rodent droppings. Still, the nice and kindly farmers had absolutely no qualms about dropping bags full of newborn kittens into the river to drown when he thought he had too many cats on the farm.

We encouraged the cats to live when their work produced a benefit to us. Now that they don't, we're suddenly accusing them of decimating the bird population. Strange, isn't it?

There's a another element to this too. The loudest voices against TNR are the hunting lobbies. There are a few reasons for this.

One, they really do believe that feral cats kill lots and lots of birds. They are wrong, but they see the cats' depredations of the bird population as competition for a scarce resource -- fat juicy quail and grouse. So, yes, let's get rid of the cats who kill them for food, so that there are more that we can kill for sport. Does not make sense to me.

Another reason is that many hunters would like to add feral cats to the list of permissible creatures to shoot. Gosh, there are so many of them, and they are not native to this country, so why not? It makes a lot of sense to them.

The last reason is that there's just a general anti-cat feeling among men who are hunters. Cats are historically associated with the feminine, and dogs and hunting with the masculine. Because of that, it just falls out that many hunters do not like cats, and they resent the fact that it is mostly women engineering the TNR programs and standing in the way of them doing exactly what they'd like to do.

I think the people that are in denial are the ones that accuse cats of wiping out the bird populations, when we know very well that birds are far more susceptible to pesticides and urbanization than to occasionally getting fished out of the air by a predator. Most species of birds are just as fertile as cats. They nest twice a year. More in warmer climates. And each nesting results in a clutch of 3-6 eggs, and if most eggs hatch (which is usual) a nesting couple can reproduce themselves 2-5 times over in a single year. If you've worked with birds at all, then you know that even the chemicals released into the air by having your rug shampooed can kill them in 24 hours or less. Loud noises and other changes in the environment can stress them to the point that they stop reproducing altogether and eventually die.

It's errant nonsense to suggest that cats are somehow responsible for extinction of bird species. WE are responsible for it, and if not, then why is it that we've had feral cats as part of our American landscape for hundreds of years, and this is the first we're hearing about it?

Bullcrackers.

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whimsicaldeb
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Post by whimsicaldeb » May 29th, 2006, 5:17 pm

There is one more thing that we need to do if we are serious about eliminating the feral cat population. We need to pass two laws. One that obligates cat owners to either have their pet cats neutered or spayed within a certain period of time ( and pay a heavy fine if they don't) or pay to register their cats as breeders. The other to fine owners who let their cats outside, unless the cat is on a leash or in a pen.
Good ideas.

About the hunting of ferals (something not in the article) but which you brought up... it's disgusting (to me). It's right up there with the uneasy “alliance” between duck hunters and environmentalist concerning saving the wetlands. Yes, duck hunters are helping save the wetlands, but the true cost is on the ducks as they become much easier to find and kill due to having less and less options/other land to go to as urban sprawl continues.

It’s as disgusting to me as those places that supply old animals from zoos for ‘wanna be’ big game hunting to trophy shoot.

What’s that old line … like shooting fish in a barrel, for those zoo animals and the ducks.

Shooting of feral cats, or any other “nuisance” animal (raccoons, opossums, ground squirrels) is illegal, and not an option in most of California because it's illegal to hunt in the suburbs among people and houses. But that doesn't stop the rural ranchers, and such from shooting them. So, in that way at least, our urban sprawl tendency in California is of help to the ferals; but overall overall, urban sprawl is not of help to any of the animals. Not even us human ones.
It's errant nonsense to suggest that cats are somehow responsible for extinction of bird species. WE are responsible for it..
That's correct and the solution isn't just one way; aka – not a “one size fits all” solution.

It's the inter-active workings of the combination of all the groups and things that are most affective that is the solution. TNR is effective, spaying and neutering is effective, animal rescue is effective, keeping cats indoors is effective; and shooting them is not that effective. Educating the public, people … getting this kind of information out there, articles such as these … help as well. (imo)

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Post by abcrystcats » May 29th, 2006, 8:55 pm

Deb :) , I know you and I think totally alike on these issues, but maybe somebody else will get a different perspective by reading us. You never know.

So, in response:
It’s as disgusting to me as those places that supply old animals from zoos for ‘wanna be’ big game hunting to trophy shoot.
Yeah, ditto. I thought hunting was supposed to be a challenging and athletic activity, but it's getting to be an instant gratification sport.

What an incredibly self-serving way we have of ridding ourselves of burdensome obligations. --Passing old zoo animals off to get shot -- Can we have a "Grandma Shoot-Out?" It sure would clear out the nursing homes.

You think that urban sprawl protects the animals, and you are right. They think so too, which is why they are increasingly hanging around in cities and suburbs. Have you read about the fox overpopulation in the city of London?

On the other hand, I recently ran across an abstract for a paper documenting the increasing social acceptance for urban deer hunting. You can look it up online and there's pages of subject matter. How safe are our pets under those circumstances? Let alone the ducks, raccoons, opossums, ground squirrels and feral cats?

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