CCT Article: Feral Cat Pop. Breeds Fondness and Frustration
Posted: April 30th, 2006, 3:51 pm
Source:
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.
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.