A national debate is raging about how to deal with stray cats.

“It’s a normal thing for people to feed stray animals,” says Lynn Toler, past president and current board member of the Haywood Animal Welfare Association (HAWA).

Toler, in fact, is supporting a colony of feral cats, an action that is supported by many humane organizations. Others, however, believe that supporting colonies of stray cats creates problems for other wildlife.

Cats have become the pet of choice in the U.S., outnumbering dogs according to the latest estimate. Census data show that the number of pet cats doubled from 30 million in 1970 to 60 million in 1990. Coinciding with this increase in pet cats was an increase in feral cats.

Feral cats are the progeny of stray or abandoned cats, more or less self-sufficient with little or no human contact. Most estimates place the number of feral cats in the country at around 60 million. While basically self-sufficient, feral cats still tend to congregate near human habitation. They know they can find food here. Where the food supply is adequate, cats gather in numbers creating colonies. The size of the colonies varies depending on food supply, but some may reach upwards of 50 animals.

Cats procreate exponentially. An intact female may have multiple litters in a year’s time. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) estimates that one pair of breeding cats and their offspring can produce up to 400,000 cats within seven years.

Humane organizations, wildlife biologists, veterinary associations, local governments and concerned citizens all agree that something needs to be done to curtail the population of feral cats. Until recently, most agreed that the best that could be done was to trap feral cats, try and adopt the ones that could be socialized and euthanize the rest.

In the late 1970s, however, researchers in Great Britain began to experiment with other alternatives. One program that began to garner support entailed trapping feral cats, spaying or neutering them, vaccinating them and releasing them back into the colony from which they came.

This program began to gain wide support in the states with the creation of Alley Cat Allies (ACA) in 1990. According to an ACA publication, the group, today maintains a national network of 1,000 feral cat caretakers, veterinarians and organizations and boasts a membership of 65,000.

Toler believes the trap, neuter and release (TNR) method of dealing with feral cats is humane and effective. She has managed to secure a grant of $5750 from the Summerlee Foundation of Dallas, Tx., for the management of one area colony. Toler knows of seven feral cat colonies that are being maintained in the Waynesville area.

The San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SF SPCA) has joined ACA, the Doris Day Animal League and other humane organizations are urging the widespread support and implementation of the program. HSUS will neither totally endorse nor totally denounce TNR. “... traditional programs to reduce feral cat populations include either live-trapping and euthanizing cats or live-trapping, sterilizing and releasing cats so they cannot reproduce. Neither approach, however, provides a long term solution unless carried out in conjunction with a comprehensive cat control program,” says HSUS literature.

The most vitriolic debate regarding feral cats and TNR is between advocates of the program and wildlife agencies and conservation organizations. The San Francisco SPCA literature states, explicitly, that “Every reputable study to date has shown that claims of cat predation affecting bird and wildlife populations are wholly overstated ...”

“They’re not looking at the right study,” says Linda Winter of the American Bird Conservancy (ABC).
ABC materials point to studies such as C.C. Hawkins’ Ph.D. dissertation for Texas A&M, a two-year study conducted in two parks in the East Bay Regional Park District in California.

“Cats at artificially high densities, sustained by supplemental feeding, reduce abundance of native rodent and bird populations, change the rodent species composition, and may facilitate the expansion of the house mouse into new areas,” the study found.

A study of free-roaming cats in the San Diego area, published in at 1999 edition of Nature magazine, showed that each of these cats brought home an average of 24 rodents, 15 birds, and 17 lizards each year. The ABC also reported that approximately 30 percent of the birds and 20 percent of the mammals cared for at the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in California were victims of cat attacks.

Ed Clark is the president of the Wildlife Center of Virginia, the nation’s leading teaching and research hospital for native wildlife.

“one in five of our patients are the direct victim of cat attacks,” Clark said. “Eighty percent of those victims die.”

Published materials from ACA, subtitled “Facts and Myths about Feral Cats and Wildlife Predation” quotes British biologist Roger Tabor: “In terms of the cats as threats to wildlife, generally for countries like Britain and America where other species have coexisted with the cat family predators for a long time, cats are no more harmful than other predators.”

And, although ABC emphasizes that cat predation on birds is insignificant, it quotes researcher B.M. Fitzgerald.

“On all continents birds are usually much less important than mammals; birds were present on average at 21 percent frequency of occurrence, and mammals at 68 percent,” Fitzgerald wrote.

Wildlife biologists like Ron Jurek of California Fish and Game see feral colonies as unnatural and subsidized predators. Jurek, who has monitored managed cat colonies for eight years, says feeding the colonies gives them advantages that natural predators don’t have and maintains densities that would never be found in the wild.

Proponents of TNR believe the program will be exonerated in the long run because it works. The idea is to reduce feral cat population, and supporters say TNR is the most effective means. They believe that the colonies are territorial and the animals present will prevent new cats from moving into the colony. The idea is that through TNR, colonies will eventually die out by attrition.

Jurek, however, said that the very act of feeding the cats negates territoriality. Wildlife defend territories because they need the resources to survive. With an unlimited food supply, the territorial instinct is lessened.

Donna Wilcox, executive director of ACA, points to programs in Orange County, Fla., and Cape May, N.J., as TNR success stories. According to an ACA brochure, Cape May has experienced an 80 percent drop in feral cat complaints since adopting a TNR program in 1995.

But opponents point to failed TNR programs, like the one at Sonoma State University. According to an article by Pat Roberto, Sonoma State disbanded their program after a visitor to the campus was bitten by one of the cats. Edna Nakamoto, director of human resources, said that the cat population on campus had actually increased during the year that the school participated in the TNR program. ACA is campaigning to make TNR a part of local government policy.

Jurek believes that may be a welcomed step. He believes if the issue gets to judicial review more emphasis will be put on biological fact and less on emotionalism. He points to Sonoma County where a local group, Forgotten Felines, had obtained county contracts to maintain feral colonies in several public parks.

Marilyn Davis, founder of Native Species Network, took the issue to the Sonoma County government and able to effect the passage of an ordinance requiring alteration of all free-roaming cats, prohibiting the feeding of free-roaming cats on county lands and makes animal abandonment a misdemeanor.

 

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