What to do about feral cats

Visitor Question: My very small town, population around 300, is being overrun with cats that are not taken care of. Some call them feral cats. I don't know about that name, but I do know that they run around constantly meowing and
otherwise begging for food.

Every once in a while they get in a fight with one another and cause even more of a commotion. They eat anything we put out for the dogs or other pets, and in at least one example, we think they ate someone's pet bird.

Also the more tender-hearted among us are reluctant to back out of our driveways because we don't want to squish a kitty. It has happened. Suggestions from the neighbors have included everything from just tolerating the situation to trapping them to trying to catch them and take them to another town or maybe further away to a state forest. What do you think we should do?

Editor Reply: Feral cats, also sometimes called community cats, can be thought of as cats without a human family. Indeed, they can become a real problem because left alone, they can multiply rapidly. As you point out, the males also are prone to fighting, and the number of kittens can get out of hand quickly.

Cats are territorial enough that feral cats even gather in what are called colonies. So there is likely to be a group hangout place, and if your town furnishes enough food, either because people are feeding them or because they can find enough in your location on their own, you will continue to have a problem. Indeed the neighborhood quality of life may spiral downward.

If there is real consensus that you want to tackle this problem, then you have to work on getting the cats neutered. I use the term "real consensus," because lately I heard of a neighborhood where some people wanted to allow the cats to continue to procreate without any checks; these folks continued feeding the cats well in the face of opposition.

Look to any larger town near you to see if there are any volunteer or governmental organizations that can assist you. These groups sometimes lend traps, negotiate discounts with veterinarians, and provide abundant advice and hand holding. If you find such a place, it can be very helpful.

In brief, to lower the feral cat population, you will need a trap-neuter-return program. It sounded violent to me when I first heard of this type of program, but the cat traps are relatively pleasant. Traps are baited with a small amount of food and then when the cat enters, the sliding door comes down. There's no spring that slams shut on little paws.

The intention needs to be transporting the cat to the veterinarian relatively soon, certainly within a couple of days, to get the cat sterilized.

After this procedure, return the cat to the area where it was trapped. I know you don't want to hear this at all, but it is the best policy. The sterilization process calms the males down a lot and alleviates some of the yowling problem for neighbors. Over time, you will decrease the population if you don't allow new kittens into the system.

If you try to relocate the cats to a forest or state park, a phenomenon known as the vacuum effect will occur. In short, other cats will fill in the void. I didn't believe this at first, but a biologist and a veterinarian friend convinced me that this is real. Thus whatever you do, don't try that.

None of this is easy or fast, so you need a team of people who can be kind to cats who will help out. For example, it will be best to drape a towel or other fabric over the trap after the cat is caught, so that the cat will calm down and stop being so loud. If you are going to stay on the good side of the animal rights people, you have to monitor the traps frequently to find out when one has been caught. Someone has to take the cat, still in the trap, to the vet and hang in there until the process is finished. Possibly yet another volunteer will be the one who actually releases the cat from the trap a while later—doing so as soon as possible would be a bad policy. (I'm over-simplifying releasing the cat from the trap too; it is best to simply open the door and allow the cat to walk out when it is ready.)

I hope you learn from all of this talk that this project is fairly labor-intensive. Yet I think it is beneficial for both cats and humans to reduce the number of cats that are not pets that are well cared for.

When your question first arrived at our website, I wondered if we should respond to something that is pretty intensive on the side of animal behavior. Yet human welfare in communities definitely is involved, so we have tried to provide a thumbnail sketch that will show you that you need to do some community organizing if you want to tackle this problem.

Lastly, you can try educating your human population better about the effects of releasing a cat they no longer want or cannot care for. This may not be occurring in your village of 300, but often in larger town, apartment dwellers who are moving out cannot take their pets with them and simply abandon them. If you suspect any similar behavior, ask people not to do this and to notify an identified person or office if they can no longer care for a cat. That caretaker then needs to take the responsibility for getting cats spayed and vaccinated before releasing them back into the area they are familiar with.

Feral cats are seen as charming in Greece, where people feed and enjoy them. But if your community cannot take on an ever-increasing number of cats, stop their multiplication as soon as possible. Gradually their numbers will dwindle.

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