There is a bizarre story out of Portsmouth that raises questions concerning the handling of feral cats. The Portsmouth Humane Society fired its executive director Jenn Austin over the no-kill shelter’s policy for feral cats. The shelter has been having staff members adopt feral cats, sterilize them, and then release them back into the woods. Over 300 cats are believed to have been released in violation of state law under what is called a “trap, neuter and release” program. The shelter was fined for the violations by state officials and promised to discontinue the practice.
While the practice has been roundly denounced in this controversy, it is important to keep in mind that the staff was trying to avoid killing the cats while controlling the population. The shelter has a five-year contract with the city and will no longer accept feral cats since they are not candidates for adoption. The result however may be that feral cats will not be collected and sterilized. For many, trap, neuter, and release is a better option than euthanasia.
The practice began under former executive director Christie Chipps Peters, who is now the director of Richmond’s Department of Animal Care and Control.
The city however is now objecting that it thought that feral cats were part of the contract with the Portsmouth shelter while the shelter says that it was never equipped or empowered to handle feral cats. Since such cats are not viewed as appropriate for pets, it would seem that the only option (other than sterilization and release) would be killing all feral cats.
A feral cat is defined as “wild” or cats that have never been socialized. They avoid people and act aggressively. That may be hard to discern in some circumstances. The shelter is supposed to neuter all cats and put them up for adoption but feral cats are considered outside of the contract and standards for adoption by the shelter.
On paper, the shelter looked like a roaring success. In 2012, it took in 1,575 cats, 885 of which were adopted and 256 euthanized. The adoption rate appears to have included employee adoptions under the policy. it also contradicts the common view that feral cats are not candidates for adoption. I am unclear on this point as to whether feral cats can be domesticated as a practical matter.
Some employees objected to “adopting” the cats and releasing them in their neighborhoods. One employee said that two of the cats that she released were hit by cars.
Notably, the employees have said that Chipps Peters knew that the releasing of the animals violated state law because they used to laugh about it.
The shelter receives $325,000 a year from the city.
PETA has denounced the policy of release but does not explain what the policy should be short of housing hundreds of feral cats for the remainder of their lives. PETA has been criticized by animal activists for its support of euthanasia.
My first reaction to this story was horror at the thought of releasing cats into the wild. I still view that policy as bizarre. However, the more I looked at the story the more I was left wondering about alternatives. This is an adoption center. It seems like the city wants the shelter to “handle” feral cats but does not have any option to suggest other than killing every feral cat captured. One could argue that this is more human than leaving cats to starve or be hit by cars. Cats have also been linked to the rapid decrease in song birds.
The shelter states on its website that “we will never turn away an animal that comes to our doors… As long as the animal is happy and healthy, they can consider PHS their home.” However, that would seem to exclude feral cats (though it is again not clear how one can tell at an intake that a cat is a stray living in the woods or a feral cat). If the shelter does not accept the cat, doesn’t that mean it will be turned away and likely released by the good samaritan back into the wild?
The alternative is for the shelter to house hundreds of feral cats in a colony that is growing. Politicians have lined up to denounce the shelter for the “trap, neuter and release” policy but have notably waved off questions as what to do with the cats when asked by reporters.
So what is the solution if feral cats are not suitable for adoption? Should there just be an instant kill order for feral cats or is the sterilize and release policy the best of bad options?
Dan – I am the “crazy cat man” in my neighborhood. I put food and water out and have build a shelter for one-two. This is a way to keep track of those in the neighborhood. I also can see whether they’ve been neutered and if not, I can get that done. The feeding station not only helps keep these cats out of garbage cans, etc.; it lures the unaltered cats to me, so that I can get them fixed. The idea is to break the cycle of interminable litters of kittens.
i cant decide which person is more ignorant of the present national standards for handling ferals…the state, the media or perhaps the rescuers….Trap Neuter Release is an accepted practice nationwide. the animals are returned to their original area and the feeding stations are set up. this minimizes population growth, increases colony health and keeps everyone safe.. everyone in this story needs educating…
Take 10 to 100 acres and put a fence around it. Virginia and other states do this with foxes (aka: fox-penning) allowing them to be terrorized by hunting dogs, which is far more cruel than having a large “cat ranch”. The cats could still be fed, have shelter and treated by veterinarians but would just have a large space to roam.
I agree, generally, with Cade.
There is an additional issue. Where ever they are feral cats there is also a Crazy Lady who thinks it a good idea to feed them. This creates an increase in population and a cycle of more food, more cats, more food.
At the campus where I work there is a colony of feral cats, with the obligatory Crazy Lady. Eventually they had to issue a general policy against feeding them. They carried out TNR and that seems to have solved the problem.
AY:
Feral cars?
I say trap them, skin them and make Tabby Ermin coats.
I see, for National Feral Cat Day, “Professor” Turley wants to heep a bunch of confirmation bias and misinforamtion on everyone. Between this and your egregiously snobby contempt for the poor you showed with your (also confirmation bias-ladened) Walmart-EBT commentory, I am having to seriously re-evaluate my esteem for you.
TNR is a workable option when done properly and responsibly (I question whether this ONE partiualr case is that–this is not how TNR is typcially implemented). The only people denouncing it are misinformed and/or biased people (and PETA easily qualifies as both). I worked with feral cats for over 12 years. Feral cats naturally form colonies on their own–they seek out areas where they can find safety, food, and, yes, the company of other cats. The problems is, humans in their glorious stupidity, think “Hey, just get rid of the cats and that’s that.” And surprise, surprise, more cats move in.
This creates two sets of problems:
One is among the cats themelves, as it means the colony is constantly in flux, with the in-flow of new cats who are looking to breed, which creates its own conflicts, and with that higher risk of new diseases introduced by an ever changing, breeding population. When implented properly, TNR establishes an non-breeding, stable community of adult cats that know each other and tolerate one another well. For feral cats that cannot be socialized this is perhaps the best option we have to offer them.
The other problem is with humans. The notion that we can simply get rid of a feral cat colony sets up false expectations among humans, which we know are such patient, understanding animals. This means, whenever you go in and eradicate a colony, the new cats that eventually move in are at a bigger risk for being cruelly abused or killed by humans who thought that “problem” had been dealt with. And you probably do not want to know the kinds of things angry, irrational humans do to feral cats, but I’ll tell you anyways: giving poisons that cause horrifically long, painful deaths, shooting them with birdshot or BB guns, dousing them with gasoline and lighting them on fire, setting cat-aggressive dogs on them, kicking them, clubbing them, plummeling them with bricks or rocks, or running them over with cars. And that’s an incomplete list of what I’m personally witnessed humans doing to feral cats. With feral cats, the biggest threat is with humans, always. In this sense I can understand why a rescue org would opt to release them into some woods where humans would be less likely to find and terrorize them, although I don’t condone that as there’s no way to properly monitor the colony (nor does it seem this was an area where a feral colony had already developed on its own). But TNR programs seek to educate humans to help them understand why we need to let already established colonies exist. We humans created the feral cat problem–these cats are just trying to survive. We need to do what we can to let them survive as humanely as possible. And simply removing cats does the opposite–it ends up creating a cycle that results in humans being even less understanding and more cruel to cats.
The goal of TNR programs is to educate humans about their social responsiblity to domesticated animals and provide feral cats wth a humane chance to exist in our human world. No one is saying TNR is ideal, but it’s the best option when your other two main options are either irresponsibly neglient, i.e. simply ignoring the cats, or counterproductive and short-sighted, i.e. simply eradicating whatever feral cats we find. Why would any intelligent, ethical person denounce TNR if they have been educated properly on this?
Another thing: feral cats don’t act aggressively toward humans. They act fearfully. Majority of them will simply run away from humans. They only become aggressive if you try to handle them, which they interpret as a predator trying to hurt them, and act accordingly. In all my years experience with feral cats, I have only come across a small number–less than five–individual cats that I would label as genuinely aggressive toward humans, and while I made the unhappy choice to have all these cats trapped and euthanized, it was obvious they acted that way because of the extreme abuse humans had already dealt them. But saying feral cats are ipso fato aggressive, thus worthy of our human contempt, just adds to the lack of public understanding about these cats and excuses humans from our responsibility to seek a humane solution to a human-made problem.
Professor Turley, your bias and misinformation here is simply inexcusable. You need to do better or don’t write on topics that you can’t be bothered to research properly. Such irresponsible “reporting” is very unbecoming for someone who teaches and blogs on ethical issues.
LK, OS and everyone…
This seems like a rational response to a natural occurring system in place…. If the cars are feral…. Generally they can’t be trained…or tamed…. This catch, neuter and release seems to be a whole lot better than catch and kill…. And unless you are a rep in Alabama…l
To follow up on my last comment, and considering some of the observations in this thread. IMHO, the problem in the case of the shelter, as well as the animals released from the breeding farm, is a problem when small predators are released in large numbers all at once. If they did the spay and neuter and releaseg them back where they came from immediately, it would have less impact on those animals natural prey.
My daughter and I keep track of the activities of Dr. Michael Meyer and Dr. Bakary Touray at their vet clinic in The Gambia. Citizens bring in stray animals which need medical treatment. The animals are treated, spayed or neutered, and released as soon as they recover from the surgery. The clinic depends on donations. Hint, hint! 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/user/VetClinicGambia/videos
One of the biggest problems for animals in The Gambia is mangoworms Cordylobia Anthropophaga. They have nothing to do with mangoes, but are the larvae (maggot) of the Tumbu fly. They are often mistaken for botflies, but that is a different kind of parasite altogether.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3H9ieyNjPZf_XgduxnSCow
Wisconsin used to have many mink farms. They are nasty little animals! The Animal Liberation Front sent terrorists to Wi. and he released minks into the wild. The roads and fields were littered w/ their carcasses. One of the terrorists was a spoiled, rick kid from out west.
the introduction of cats into an ecosystem can change it significantly. When we first moved into our house, there were no maple trees, all red and white oak, hickory and a couple of dogwoods and some red bud.
The property had been a little hardwood forest in suburbia for years and many of the oaks were 2′ in diameter. When we moved in we got 2 cats and they were pretty much free to come and go as they pleased, well they killed chipmunks, baby squirrels, birds, baby rabbits, lizards, mice and a species of shrew which lived on the property.
A few years later I noticed that maple trees started growing on the property and I wondered why that was but didnt look into it. One day I was reading Nature, I think, and found an article about a particular shrew which ate maple tree shoots. The cat [one was killed by a car] was eating the shrews and by doing so changed the flora in my little woodland ecosystem.
Feral cats are not a good thing for local populations of small animals and anyone who thinks a feral cat is easy prey for a fox or coyote would do well to realize my little domesticated calico cat evaded a battalion of Mr. Renards for years.
nick spinelli 1, October 16, 2013 at 8:58 am
Sterilize and release. The songbirds must adapt or perish.
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Adopt or they perish too.
“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” – Oscar Wilde
Everything I have read is consistent with Nate and Paul’s comments. Most of the programs I have read about also include feeding stations which make trapping more feral cats easier, more trapping more spaying/neutering. There are attendant problems though. Cats kill because it’s who the are.
A well fed Feral cat, even one that is semi-conditioned to one or two people and fed daily, will kill. I know this first-hand. Indoor cats, let out and supervised will run out from under the bushes the disappeared into with a baby rabbit or bird in their mouth -again, first hand. There is only one way to stop that, lifelong removal from the environment.
Cats in the wild generally live 2-6 years. A well tended indoor cat lives 15-20 years. It’s damned hard being a ‘wind’ animal.
I think the shelter was doing the right thing which is really only picking the best of a bad lot of options. Ms. Jenn Austin should not have been fired.
I’ve been marginally involved in Louisville’s TNR program, in the sense that in the past few years I have trapped and had neutered about 8-10 cats in my neighborhood. Some of these were simply strays who ended up living inside with someone, others were unapproachable. None of them has been aggressive. I live in the city, so it’s a little different, perhaps, than in a wooded area. However, the local shelters report that they have had far fewer cats brought in. It is reasonable to associate this with the correlated increase in TNR.
What everyone else said above! I’ve not been a part of any “trap, neuter, release” programs, but I hear about them all over the place, and they all seem to be the most humane and effective program to deal with feral cat populations. Have the good people in the Portsmouth city council never watched “My Cat From Hell?” Jackson Galaxy would be ashamed!
This reminds me of a news story I read years ago. Seems a group of “animal rights” activists broke into a farm that raised fur bearing critters. I forget if it was mink or chinchillas. At any rate, they opened all the cages, letting the animals escape into the wild. In their press release they claimed bragging rights for “setting the animals free.”
What the activists failed to take into consideration was the fact the animals they freed had two key characteristics. They are 1) predators, and 2) they breed fast. Within a year the local ecosystem was decimated. Moral of that story? The Law of Unintended Consequences has never been repealed.
There is a fine line between activism and vandalism.
I believe Nate and JFK are correct. I have read of several studies that point to the best way of reducing wild cats breeding is to catch, neuter, and release all wild cats. Feral populations will plummet and remain low because of the neutered cats. And recently I read that cats that are fed are a small part of the songbird eating problem. Nature is tough, ever seen a video of lions or cheetahs catching and eating their prey?
Foxes and Coyotes must be licking their chops!
Sterilize and release can work in combination with feeding stations for feral cats. This keeps the feral cats relatively healthy & well-nourished while reducing their need to hunt songbirds. Also results in the gradual decrease in feral population. We use this in the Merrimack Valley (MA).
Roundly denounced by whom? From what I’ve read, the trap neuter release strategy is virtually the only successful method for reducing the population of feral cats in any area.
Sterilize and release. The songbirds must adapt or perish.