Feral Cats

A feral cat is a cat which has been separated from domestication, whether through abandonment, loss, or running away, and become wild. The term also refers to descendants of such cats, but not to Wild Cats, whose ancestors were never domesticated. Feral cats usually cannot be re-socialized. Feral kittens, however, can be socialized to live with humans if they are taken from a feral colony before they are about twelve weeks old.

Feral cats may live alone, but are usually found in large groups called feral colonies with communal nurseries, depending on resource availability. Many abandoned pet cats join these colonies out of desperation; these cats can usually be readopted into a new home. The average lifespan of a feral cat that survives beyond kittenhood is usually less than two years while a domestic housecat lives an average of sixteen years or more.

In the United States

Cityscapes and North America are not native environments for the cat; the domestic cat comes from temperate or hot, often dry, climates and was distributed throughout the world by humans. Although cats are somewhat adaptable, feral felines are unable to survive in extreme cold and heat, and with a need for a diet of 90% protein, few cats find adequate nutrition on their own. In addition, they have no defense against or understanding of such predators as dogs, coyotes and even automobiles. The current population of twenty to forty million feral felines in the United States is due, initially, to human interference by environmental introduction and later, by simple human irresponsibility and neglect.

In the United States "Trap-Neuter-Return" programs, one of the more humane ways to deal with feral cat populations, are facilitated by many volunteers and organizations. In addition to sterilization, inoculation against rabies and the feline leukemia virus as well as the application of long-lasting flea treatments before release are common. Frequently, attending veterinarians nip the tip off one ear to mark the feral as spayed/neutered and inoculated, as these cats will more than likely find themselves trapped again. Volunteers often continue to feed and give care to these cats throughout their lives. Many would like to do more, but most fully feral cats are unadoptable.

The "trap, spay/neuter, release" program is considered the most humane, yet still efficient way to deal with the problem for several reasons. From the perspective of the cat, better quality and more food is provided by humans, competition for natural resources is reduced, and they are protected from the most debilitating diseases. From the human perspective, the feral cat problem is gradually eliminated because the cats do not reproduce. Behavior and nuisance problems due to competition for food and mating activities post-release are immediately reduced. Over time, these feral colonies becomes smaller and generally disappear; new cats will rarely join a colony of sterile animals. More and more animal shelters throughout the United States are becoming "no kill shelters", and are gradually implementing more humane, yet definitive animal population control methods. Some states such as California and many countries around the world have had tremendous success with humane methods to control feral cat populations.

As is their nature, there is no doubt feral cats will hunt other small species. While control of rats, mice, and other rodents is a cat activity humans support, feral cats kill songbirds and other birds. Some estimate the bird loss at over two hundred million a year. These figures may be questionable, however, with some of the damage due to the resurgence of other small predators such as the gray fox (urocyon cinereoargenteus), fisher or pekan (martes pennanti), coyote (canis latrans), and puma (puma concolor). It has been suggested by individuals without environmental science backgrounds that feral cats should simply be hunted to immediately reduce the feral cat problem. Radical specicide, especially when more animals are abandoned each day, is never a prudent long-term answer to any animal-human problem; the solution is more responsible husbandry of the domestic cat by the species that initially started the problem.

[1] (http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/index.php?ntid=31029&ntpid=3)

October 16 is National Feral Cat Day in the United States.

In Australia

Feral cats have been present in Australia since European settlement, and may have arrived with Dutch shipwrecks in the 17th century. Intentional releases were made in the late 19th century in the hope that cats would control mice, rabbits and rats.

The feral cat has been an ecological disaster in Australia, inhabiting most ecosystems except dense rainforest, and being implicated in the extinction of several marsupial and placental mammal species. (Cats are not believed to have been a factor in the extinction of the only mainland bird species to be lost since European settlement, the Paradise Parrot; their role in the loss of rare species on Australasian islands, however, has been significant.)

Control programs are difficult to devise due to the nocturnal and solitary nature of the cat, broad distribution in the landscape and continuous additions to the population from abandoned domestic cats. Due to the danger posed to human handling the animal, captured feral cats are almost always terminated. No program for spaying and neutering, akin to that in the United States exists in Australia.

In Rome

Rome, Italy is perhaps the place with most feral cats, the total number being estimated between 250,000 and 350,000, organized in about 2,000 colonies, some of them living in famous ancient places such as the Colosseum.

Feral cats and island restoration

Feral cats introduced to islands with ecologically naive fauna (that is, species that have not evolved or have lost predator responses for dealing with cats) have had a devastating impact on these islands' biodiversity. They have been implicated in the extinction of several species and local extinctions, such as the huitas from the Caribbean and the Guadalupe Storm-petrel from Pacific Mexico. Moors and Atkinson wrote, in 1984, "No other alien predator has had such a universally damaging effect." Given the damage they do, many conservationists working in the field of island restoration (literally restoring damaged islands through removal of introduced species and replanting and reintroducing native species) have worked to remove feral cats. As of 2004, 48 islands have had their feral cat populations removed, including New Zealand's network of offshore island bird reserves (Nogales et al, 2004). Larger projects are also being planned, including their removal from Ascension Island.

Feral cats, along with rabbits and some sea birds, are the entire animal population of the remote Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean.

Activism

Unlike novelty pets which are often discarded upon reaching adulthood, most feral cats are discarded as kittens. This is because cats breed rapidly and have large litters, and often their owners do not have the capacity or desire to care for a large number of cats.

Feral cats live in horrible conditions, living short, dangerous, unhealthy, desperate lives. Like any uninoculated mammal species, there is a risk they will develop rabies and pose a threat to human health.

Because of the dangers to humans, other species, and the cats themselves, and out of compassion toward the animals, many people, including celebrities such as Bob Barker, campaign to encourage people to spay and neuter their pets and support the humane control of feral cats.