Millions of Cats

I live with an 87-year-old woman who is learning to use a computer. In addition to e-mailing, discovering that Oprah has put her book on the Kids' Reading List: Classics for 6 to 9 Years, and playing rousing games of solitaire; she is using the computer to type her memoirs. Through helping her learn the advanced features of Microsoft Word such as copy, paste, and the life-changing Cntrl-Z, I have had the opportunity to read pieces of her story. 

The other night, a lesson on the Backspace button let to a tangent on the book Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág. It turns out, one of the paintings in my room is by Ms. Gág. My housemate had a copy of the book, one that Ms. Gág used to read to her. I read it for the first time and years and realized…it’s kind of a violent story!

For those of you who haven’t read the book, it is about an elderly couple that are lonely and want a cat. The husband goes off to find them a feline friend, but is unable to restrain himself from bringing home "...hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats..." This animal hoarding proves unsustainable and a giant catfight breaks out. When the dust settles, only one cat is left. The couple takes in the one cat, nourishes it, loves it, and lives happily ever after. Although it isn’t mentioned in the story, I like to think that they kept their new pet mostly indoors and also took it to be registered, microchipped, vaccinated, and spayed.

Lessons from this story (from my perspective) include the fact that feral cats will fight and kill other cats and people should only try to keep as many cats as they can house and feed. Had a giant catfight not broken out, the man or his wife may have contracted one of the several diseases that unvaccinated feral cats can transmit to humans such as rabies, ringworm, or toxoplasmosis. Their home may have become infested with fleas. The number of birds that visited their window feeder surely would have been reduced. And, despite popular belief, they would still probably have mice. Not a very happy ending for the well-meaning couple.

Cats contribute to the lives of many people as loving companions. As pets they may be classified as indoor, limited-range, or free-range depending on how far they are allowed to venture from home. Home is the key word here—cats that are pets are owned by someone and thus a person is responsible for the care and activities of the animal. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), feral cats are born outside and are never socialized in the first 24 weeks of their lives. Pet cats that are abandoned are called stray cats. So who is responsible for feral and stray cats?

The answer is surprisingly complicated. Feral and stray cats are not technically classified as wildlife, so Wildlife Control Operators (WCOs) or game and parks commissions often won’t deal with them. Feral and stray cats are not technically pets, so municipal animal control may not want to deal with them either. In some towns, if the cat is on your property it’s your responsibility to deal with it, but a feral cat may wander throughout 1.5 square miles regardless of property boundaries. So what can you do? 

Many may ask, why would you do anything? If you had skunks or raccoons crawling all over your property, people would be concerned and want you to take action. For some reason, cats are a different story. People have an affinity for cats and don’t like the idea of controlling them as if they were pests. The reality is that too many cats can be a problem because of the diseases they can carry and harm they can cause to native wildlife and other cats.

Many believe that if they are well fed, cats won’t kill birds and other wildlife. Unfortunately, research doesn’t support this belief. Cats will hunt regardless of how much food we provide them. This is only one of the myths about feral cats that science is proving wrong. Before beginning an IPM program for cats, I recommend you read the four resources recommended here and hold a community meeting so that everyone has an opportunity to understand the problem and can give their input into the management plan.

The goal of feral cat management is to reduce the number of feral cats and manage their care. First, it is good to know your local options. This is a nice rainy day activity—gather your policies and contacts so that when you have feral cats to deal with you know who to go to for help.

• Re-read your lease and pet policy so that you know what residents are required to do.
• Contact your local animal control officer and ask him or her what the regulations apply in your area. In many cases this will include referring you to local shelters.
• Call the local shelters and find out if they accept strays and ferals and also ask if there are any trap-neuter-vaccinate-return (TNVR) programs in your area. For more information on what the Humane Society of the United States recommends, see http://www.humanesociety.org/assets/pdfs/pets/overview_caring_for_feral_cats.pdf  

Although I don’t know of any studies on it, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the rat control information I posted last week could apply to cats. Cats breed in the springtime (when the days get longer), so in order to impact the population the most, you may want to reduce the population as much as possible in the winter. Here is a start to what your IPM plan for cats could include:

1. Inspect and identify

We learn to identify a cat from other kinds of animals as toddlers, but how do you know whether a cat belongs to someone? It is very hard, and possibly impossible to tell—encourage cat owners in your community to put collars on their pets and have a microchip implanted so that if the pet is trapped it will be returned.

Maintenance staff often know the cats on a property based on daily observation (which is inspection). If a cat looks skinny, sick, or has wounds from a cat fight, it may be feral or stray. If the cat has a notch out of its ear or the top of the ear is clipped off (“tipped”), it is neutered. Inspect until you know about how many cats you have and whether each is neutered. During your inspection, also note where the cats get food, water, and shelter so that subsequent control efforts can be focused on these areas.

2. Determine if action is necessary

This is for your IPM team to decide. At the very least, have a TNVR program in place so that all outdoor cats are vaccinated and neutered. Feral cats can produce up to 5 litters per year, each with 2 to 10 kittens... “hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats...”

3. Plan treatment and take action

There is a documented phenomenon with cat control called the vacuum effect. Basically, if you remove cats from an area and there are still resources (food, water, and shelter) present, more cats will move in. Unless you are going to reduce the food, water, and shelter available on your property it is not worth your time or money to remove cats for relocation or euthanasia.

Cultural control and habitat modification: 
Help prevent strays by educating residents about pet ownership and enforcing your pet policy. You may be able to partner with a local shelter or vet clinic and offer affordable microchipping, vaccinating, and neutering.

Part of property wide pest control is sanitation—cat control is no exception. Cats will eat both human refuse and pet food, so do what you have to in order to limit the food and water available.

Knowing your property and identifying the areas where cats are getting food and shelter will allow you to implement other creative control strategies. For example, if there is a birdfeeder that the cats are hunting around, move it at least 10 feet from anything the cat could hide under—this will give the birds a better chance of escaping.

Mechanical control:
As with any pest, exclusion is a great option. If cats get into your building’s basement, crawl space, or under a deck, use fencing or netting to keep them out.

Another popular mechanical control option is live-trapping in order to relocate or neuter and vaccinate the animal. Only experienced professionals should trap. If you are relocating cats, do so through a shelter. Simply driving down the road and letting the cat go doesn’t help the community and that cat will be trap shy in the future. For a (somewhat controversial) report on IPM for feral cats, including guidance on trapping, see http://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/epublic/live/ec1781/build/ec1781.pdf

Biological Control: 
Dogs that have a limited range may scare cats from coming into an area. If dogs are used in this manner, make sure the dogs are confined so that they don’t chase down and kill the cats.

And I suppose fertility control is part of biological control. The Nebraska report states that more than 70% of the cats must be neutered in order to reduce the population, yet it is mentioned in most control guidances.

Chemical Control: 
There are no toxicants labeled for cats. Although there are repellents labeled for use against cats, the repellents are not effective for long term control.

Chemicals may play a role in feral cat control if you choose to find a professional to humanely euthanize trapped cats through injection.

There is great debate about feral cat euthanasia. If you decide to euthanize, the ultimate goal is always to end the cat’s life with as little distress and pain as possible. The Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management advocates trapping and shooting (http://icwdm.org/wildlife/housecat.asp) because these methods eliminate the stressful live-trapping and handling. The AVMA does not advocate trapping or shooting cats. Regardless of how you morally weigh-in on this subject, your options may be limited because of local regulations around firearms and trapping.

FYI, in addition, AVMA specifically lists drowning, blows to the head, chloral hydrate, chloroform, cyanide, formalin, and household products and solvents as being unacceptable agents of euthanasia for any animal in their AVMA Guidelines on Euthanasia: http://www.avma.org/issues/animal_welfare/euthanasia.pdf

4. Evaluate effectiveness

Continue to inspect your property for cats as well as the food, water, and shelter they need to survive. If the control plan isn’t working, revisit your options and try a different approach. Regardless of whether you have feral cats or not, make sure people in the community know what they can to do be responsible pet owners—register, microchip, neuter, and vaccinate…oh, and feed and love them too!

Comments

[Allie Taisey]

http://www.panhandleparade.com/index.php/mbb/article/feral_cats_could_create_health_concern/mbb7728165/

Although this article doesn't actually say any rabid feral cats have been found, it is interesting that the reporter locked onto the feral cat issue in conjunction with reports of rabies.

Because people are more inclined to approach feral cats than they would be to approach an equally friendly raccoon or skunk, the risk may be greater.

Thanks to my friend Missy who works at the Cornell Veterinary Diagnostic Lab for sharing this!

[Sam Bryks]

A most thorough overview treatment of the issue Allie.

A recent controversy involved University of Nebraska recommending both shooting and leghold trapping as a means of reducing feral cat populations. This drew immediate response from the United States Humane Society as a totally inappropriate approach. I was shocked as i know UoN has been a leader in wildlife management approaches and I purchased their excellent manual some years ago., I believe it is available online.

I am not an expert in this area, but i have had some experience with feral cats - my first encounter with them was as a little boy when my family lived in a flat above a grocery store in Kensington Market in Toronto. I remember approaching a kitten to pet it, and discovering that this was not the usual kitten one would expect as it immediately went into a defensive stance with hair standing on end, hissing and snarling at me. I realized even then as a little boy that this was not an ordinary cat. Some of the adults were more approachable even if wary.

There are a lot of feral cats in Jerusalem and some of them very badly treated, although people do leave food for them near garbage dumpsters out of kindness.

Some humane societies just do not subscribe to killing healthy animals (the term "euthanize" is a misnomer in most cases). Euthanasia actually is the intentional killing of an animal or a human to relieve intractable suffering. Killing feral cats is NOT euthanasia. It is just killing. There is no mercy involved in killing an animal that has managed to survive in the urban environment through its wiles and hunting skills.

I am no expert on cats and songbirds, but I believe that more songbirds have been driven out of urban areas by habitat loss than by feral cats. Humans are responsible for far more deaths of birds in the city than feral cats. Birds have predators - and there is a natural balance between prey and predator that is as ancient as life itself. Accusing feral cats of impacting songbirds is sort of like blaming seals for the destruction of the cod fishery. Seals and cod existed for hundreds of thousands, or millions of years, and when Cabot first came to Newfoundland and his seamen could literally catch cod with pails, the seals were there. No fish, no seals...

I personally find this practice of clipping or notching cat ears to be barbaric. Cats that are neutered or spayed should be microchipped and identified by markings. Perhaps the notching or clipping is a small price to pay for a cat to be left alone, but i find this to be a truly primitive and obnoxious act of injury.

The real answer to the feral cat population lies in the accepted practice of live trapping and neutering/spaying that you mention, but also mandatory microchipping of all pets. I have two cats and they are both microchipped. This enables them to be returned to owners if they are lost, but it also identifies owners and accountability. The problem is when people get "cute" pets and then abandon them when they are inconvenient. i am not big on paying licencing annually as a tax, but i agree with paying to have a pet microchipped.

We need to take responsibility for our pets. I can never forget going through a research facility at a medical college and seeing dogs and cats who were obviously someone's pet in cages, and seeing and hearing those victims' plaintive voices calling for attention. Some of them abandoned..Some of them kidnapped for profit. All of them fated for destruction. It is quite another thing to have animals born and raised for this purpose sad as it is. That is an entire other issue.

I believe that feral populations need to be tolerated in habitats where they can survive, and managed and treated against diseases. I once dealt with a school that had a small population of cats living under portables.. i had recommended trapping and removal to the humane society (which did not kill healthy animals), but the school caretakers chose to take responsibility for these cats..They were trapped, neutered/spayed, vaccinated and released. The caretakers fed them. A mix of strays, but their contact with the caretakers socialized the young. A happy outcome.

Cat populations needed to be managed. I just don't like killing of healthy animals.

Just my thoughts Allie.

Sam

[Allie]

From: http://joomla.wildlife.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=117&Itemid=299

“According to TNR promoters, feral cat colonies also provide natural rodent control. However, one peer-reviewed study
found that the house mouse (Mus musculus) was more common in parks with managed cat colonies, leading the authors to
conclude that cats upset the balance of rodent populations and could lead to the expansion of house mice into previously
unoccupied ranges."

[Allie]

A new resource on feral cats: http://www.ipminstitute.org/school_ipm_2015/Feral_cats_pest_press.pdf

[John McDermott]

Feral cats who are part of a TNR program pose minimal risk to humans of transmitting disease.