Feral cats destroying Iowa
March 12th, 2008
At least they have the right idea:
There’s money to be made in Randolph, which is offering a $5 bounty for each feral feline turned in.
I know that feral cat enthusiasts will now bombard this small town with emails and hate mail demanding that they use the ineffective trap-neuter-release.
Please, small Iowa town, continue with your good plan. TNR is totally ineffective. Feral cats spread disease. Feral cats kill wildlife.
Related posts: Trap, neuter, release and the Iowa cats, "Animal rights" versus biodiversity, Feral cats in China
9 Comments Add your own
1. Cat in the hat | March 13th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
First of all, your science is wrong. Why not check your sources before you post, and second of all, your “related posts: Feral cats in China, … = huge environmental problem!” is about the stupidest thing I have ever read. Check China out, they have some environmental problems that truly are huge, not this idiotic crap. Like perhaps air pollution, and water pollution.
Duh.
2. Peter Bray | March 13th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
I don’t have a post called “Feral cats in China = huge environmental problem”. You are mixing two separate posts together.
I have checked lots of sources on feral cats and TNR. There are zero scientific studies that show that TNR is at all effective at reducing or “stabilizing” populations!
3. Susanne Schraeder | March 13th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I’m curious:
Where have you gotten information of TNR being ineffective?
Do you think this will solve the problem, if the people continue to do spay and neuter?
What is your distinction between wiildlife and wild, living feral cats?
Thanks for your response.
4. Peter Bray | March 13th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
You can read through some of my other posts on feral cats that discuss TNR and its ineffectiveness. In particular:
By wildlife I mean native animals. Feral cats are not native and, as introduced apex predators, do immeasurable harm to native, often endangered, species. They also serve as a major vector for disease, not least toxoplasmosis which, in turn, is killing endangered California sea otters.
For proponents of trap-neuter-release, it is their job to scientifically demonstrate that their approach actually reduces cat population numbers as opposed to catch-and-euthanize. To me, at least, it is logically impossible that the former is more effective than the latter. But I would welcome links to experiments that demonstrate its effectiveness… someone said there was one in the comments, but they didn’t provide any links to it.
5. Michelle | March 15th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Having Neighborhood wild cats fixed and released does help! We have several cats ourselves and often see our pets being tomented by Ferals. We took it apon ourselves to have these animals fixed and released and thankfully they no longer bother us. We see them from time to time, but they are not attacking our cats, and it is a wild animal’s duty to eat from the wild. I don’t really mind if one or two of them sneek a bite when it has been raining none stop for weeks and all the lizards and frogs and bugs have gone into hidding. The most important job that we have to do as protectors of God’s creations is to actually protect them and that mean from themselves sometimes. The TNR program stops cats from reproducing, and it puts kittens that are young enough into great homes - and they go into those home already fixed.
Our TNR programs WILL NOT allow a sick cat to go back out on the street. They are tested for STD type deseases and Lukemia. Plus no cat can go back out with out a 3 year Rabese Vacine.
When I had my first cat done it cost hundreds of dollors, but when I adopted my 2 others (and my last too others - no I am not an old woman on the corner who is hording all the cats) I went to the shelter where the base cost was only $35 or so and we received a discount because we captured cats for them.
TNR is a program that could work as well as testing a few kids in each school and hope that all the TB was caught inside that school. A wiser solution would be to test everbody in the school and everybody who then moved into it.
Those who appose TNR say, “if we just kill all of the kats then we won’t have any cats to deal with.” But how do you really know that you have gotton all the cats? If just two are lucky enough to find a place to hide they could have several litters, and then those kittens will go and have litters of their own. So within 4 months your once “cat free society” is growing and growing fast! Also, If your neighboring community seems to be getting a little crowded to a groups of cats they will happily move to your town. Of course, remember all that stuff that you were so unhappy with the cats eating. Well, Cats eat a lot of things that you never know about that will start to take over - worms, lizards, frogs, grasshoppers - any sorce of protein that crawl or hops cats will eat.
I hope that your town rethinks its radifacation idea.
6. annoyed | March 15th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Yeah, as you say, cats eat worms, lizards, grasshoppers and lots of other things… including endangered birds, endangered reptiles, endangered amphibians. This site, if I am not mistaken, is not about hating cats, but about protecting other native, endangered species.
As you point out, feral cats are like a plague to native small creatures.
And, as you implicitly point out, TNR will not solve that.
The only solution is euthanasia.
(P.S., Do the vets test for toxoplasmosis and destroy ferals that have it? If not, why not?)
7. Shawn | March 22nd, 2008 at 7:49 pm
You do realize that all of this bitching and moaning about feral cats isn’t going to do a lick of good. Feral cats have been around for God knows how long. Their populations are exploding all around the world. Trap and kill doesn’t work. Hunting doesn’t work. And TNR doesn’t either. It’s like trying to eradicate pigeons from NYC. No chance. They reproduce way too fast. Plus, too many people love cats for any sort of mass killing to ever take place. Any politician who OK’d a true mass killing would lose way too many votes in the next election. So it’ll never happen. Way more people love cats than love birds, and that will never change. Unless birds evolve to become cuter than cats. WHich is unlikely. And ridiculous.
I say we just have to get used to it. All species eventually go extinct for some reason or another. Nothing we do will stop it. Especially since we caused the problem to begin with. The cats just took advantage of our carelessness.
8. Emma | June 3rd, 2008 at 10:10 am
NO ONE SHOULD KILL ANIMALS! EVEN FERAL CATS! IT’S EVIL! I know I it might be “killing widlife” and “spreading disease”, but NO ONE should kill kitties!
9. wickerman | September 27th, 2008 at 5:17 am
“tnr”works? and the numbers of these bastard creatures grow every year? yes, is evil to kill animals, except cats. everyone who kill a cat is a happy man. because cats are like terorists, they kill for the PLEASURE to kill. Let the volunteers to kill stray cats, and keep the domestic cats indoor, else…
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