Conscientious Kitty Control

Communities opt for new humane techniques to solve the age-old alley cat problem

By Deb Acord
CTW Features

Image courtesy Alley Cat Allies

Americans love cats. About 90 million of them share our homes. But another 60 million live on their own, scrounging for sustenance, avoiding human contact.

Known as feral cats – wild animals that are almost ghost-like, hiding by day and emerging at night – they prowl society’s underbelly: An alley that dissects an industrial park in Colorado Springs, Colo., an abandoned apartment building in Washington, DC; and the dumpsters behind fast-food row in Kansas City. Banding together in groups called colonies where they fight, hunt and reproduce at alarming rates, they are reviled by some, who dislike their nighttime activities. They are also a concern to others who worry about their impact on public health and safety.

Despite their virtual invisibility, feral cats have become the topic of increasing public discourse and the focus of animal-welfare groups. They’re discussed at virtually all humane-group conferences these days, and grass-roots efforts are afoot in many communities to reduce the feral-cat population in a humane way.

The reason for all this attention? The Humane Society of the United States, Washington D.C., explains it this way: “This is a community-generated problem and every community has a responsibility to work toward a solution.”

For decades, animal control agencies and animal shelters tried to control feral populations by capturing and offering kittens for adoption and euthanizing the adults. It was a woefully unsuccessful approach. Shelters were overflowing with kittens and the number of cats euthanized kept increasing since ferals don’t adapt well to humans.

“People didn’t know much about feral cats; they didn’t understand feral cats,” says Becky Robinson, president of Alley Cat Allies, Bethesda, Md., one of the first groups to turn to an approach that had been successful in Europe. Instead of trapping and trying to find homes for wild cats or euthanizing them, they began trapping, neutering and returning the cats to their colony to continue to live wild.

“There were some people who told us we were crazy, that we shouldn’t be doing this,” Robinson says.

Today, that approach, known as Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), is being embraced nationwide. Volunteers and animal welfare organizations locate cat colonies, trap the cats, take them to veterinarians for sterilization and return them to the colony. As reproduction decreases and older cats die, the colony size naturally decreases.

The HSUS calls TNR “the most viable, long-term approach available at this time to reduce feral cat populations.” And the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, New York City, also supports TNR programs, offering workshops and support and information on how to implement a program on its Web site, www.aspca.org.

The TNR movement in the U.S. budded in the 1980s at an unlikely location – Stanford University in California. The Stanford Cat Network was founded in 1989 to reduce a campus cat population that had reached 500. Adult cats were trapped and neutered and let free; kittens were adopted. Within 15 years the campus feral cat population had been reduced to 85.

A year after the Stanford project was launched Alley Cat Allies got its start on the other side of the country.

“Most shelters and animal control agencies were either ignoring feral cats or removing them and euthanizing them,” Robinson says. “We started small, with just a few volunteers, and we learned how to run the program as we went along.”

Alley Cat Allies steadily grew, and eight years later opened the only no cost spay and neuter clinic for feral cats in the Washington, D.C. area. Last year, the group received nearly $4 million in donations and grants, and today, a staff of 20 works on feral cat issues and programs throughout the country.

The group has become the clearinghouse for information on feral cats and TNR programs, and has created a list of more than 1,500 volunteer caregivers and veterinary professionals around the country (see www.alleycat.org for more information).

The early going was rough, Robinson says, but sentiment began to shift rather quickly because people “didn’t like the policy and practice of catch and kill. It wasn’t working. The only successful option for caring for unwanted cats is adoption, and these cats can’t be adopted.”

Taming a feral cat is like trying to make a squirrel or raccoon a household pet, advises a New York City-based group called Neighborhood Cats.

Neighborhood Cats was started eight years ago when co-founders Bryan Kortis and Ruth Sharp happened upon a vacant lot teeming with feral cats. When they realized there was no help available in Manhattan, they turned to Alley Cat Allies and learned about the TNR concept.

“We started looking at the numbers of feral cats that were trapped and euthanized. Over two decades, those numbers just kept going up,” Valerie Sicignano, spokeswoman for Neighborhood Cats and the National Feral Cats Summit, says. (For more information: www.neighborhoodcats.org)

The annual summit, held earlier this month in Orlando, Fla., attracted volunteers, members of rescue groups, shelter and animal control directors, and veterinarians and vet techs, Sicignano says.

These days, even the general public is turning its attention to the problem. “In New York, we get calls frequently from people who say, ‘just get the cats out of my backyard,’ or ‘I’m not a cat person,’” Sicignano says. “‘Can you help me?’ We invite them to a workshop and teach them about feral cats, and pretty soon, people want to help.”

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