Homo Sapiens and Felis Catus have lived alongside one another for thousands of years. It is unknown exactly how or why these two species established contact -- most likely it something to do with human communities storing food, which attracted rodents, which in turn attracted any nearby felines.
But however it happened, humankind and felinekind ended up embarking on a course that has led to a very interesting relationship. Unlike domesticated dogs, cats seem capable of coexisting with humans in two very different ways -- that is, as housecats (who are "socialized" to humans and have regular close contact with us) or as feral cats (who are primarily social with other felines, and wary of humans though plenty live in yards and barns and alleys where they see humans now and again).
And while presently millions of cats live happily and healthily in human homes as companion animals or in comfortable, well-managed colonies outdoors, unfortunately many millions more are suffering and being killed every year -- feral cats especially.
Anyway, given my recent decision to adopt a few feral kittens (in addition to help out however I could with the colony they came from -- more on that later), I've lately done a bit of reading and research about cats, and the current state of the USA's feline population.
And...I was pretty horrified by some of what I found in some cases. According to some sources, 72% of cats who enter shelters are killed. The various stories of abuse, neglect, and "hoarding" situations faced by innumerable others also make for some truly awful reading indeed.
I was also amazed to learn that the cat population is so huge! In the United States alone, there were estimated to be about 81.7 million "pet" cats as of 2007, and estimates of the number of "feral" cats number in the tens of millions. According to the ASPCA, "In seven years, one female cat and her offspring can yield 420,000 cats."
That's a lot of cats!
So, while of course (as a lifelong Cat Person) I think cats are wonderful, and while I obviously wouldn't want them to go extinct, there doesn't seem to be much danger of that anytime soon. Quite the contrary in fact! No matter how many cats we manage to round up and take into clinics to be spayed or neutered, there are always going to be some producing kittens out there.
And given the Malthusian Kitty Nightmare faced by so many felines today (who end up in overcrowded shelters, hoarders' homes, or worse), the most responsible thing we naked apes can do is avoid setting things up for innumerable kittens to keep coming into the world every year.
This, of course, means that everyone who has a companion cat really ought to spay or neuter them. Not only will you avoid any chance of adding to the feline population, your cat will more than likely live longer and suffer far fewer health problems as a result of being altered.
But most people reading this, I'd wager, already know this.
Trap-Neuter-Return, Not Shelters, Best For Feral Cats
What a lot of people don't seem to be aware of is the plight of feral cats (who are the offspring of strayed, escaped, or abandoned domestic cats).
Hence, seeing as October 16 has been declared "National Feral Cat Day" by feral cat advocacy group Alley Cat Allies, I figured I would write a bit about the issues facing these felines, and what we humans can do to help mitigate them.*
Firstly and most importantly, it is crucial to understand that shelters are not sanctuaries.
While plenty of shelters certainly treat their charges well and do what they can to help adopt out the animals that come through their doors, they are not infinite in capacity.
If you happen to find or trap a feral cat, you do not want to bring him or her to a shelter, unless you are going there to take advantage of the veterinary or spay-neuter clinics sometimes available at shelters.
Adult feral cats are not likely to be "adoptable" (given they've generally come to be very cautious around humans), and would find prolonged confinement extremely stressful. Bringing a feral cat to a shelter is more likely to end in execution than anything else -- as noted by Alley Cat Allies, "For feral cats, the kill rate in pounds and shelters rises to virtually 100%."
This is not to say that shelters provide no valuable services, and I am not saying nobody should adopt a shelter animal -- on the contrary, shelters are one of the best places to get companion animals, as you know you are getting one who really needs a home. However, they are neither equipped nor staffed to deal appropriately with feral cats, and hence, it does not make sense to bring feral cats there.
There are a number of guidelines you can follow to identify a feral versus a stray or lost cat, (and act accordingly) but in general if the cat does not approach you, vocalize in your presence, or (if trapped) calm down and start acting housecattish within a short period, you may very well be dealing with a feral feline.
If this is the case, and you see no evidence of ear tipping (a mark some clinics use to permit identification of already-altered cats), or if the cat is obviously "intact", then your best bet is to look into local Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) resources.
TNR basically consists of trapping unaltered feral cats, having them spayed or neutered (and ideally vaccinated against rabies, etc.), and then returning them to their colonies. There, they can live out their lives in the manner to which they are accustomed -- minus much of the spraying, fighting, yowling, medical problems, and endless pregnancies that can ensue in groups of cats whose members aren't "fixed".
Now, some folks seem to think that the only way to "deal with" feral cats is to round up large groups of them and kill them. However, feral cat colonies only exist where there is an ecological niche for them to inhabit, making eradication not just needlessly cruel, but ineffective, as new cats will tend to move in to fill the void left.
TNR in combination with appropriate vet care (vaccination, etc.) and humane colony management solves many, many problems both for cats living in feral colonies and their human neighbors.
TNR or Adoption - Both Good Choices for Feral Kittens
Another thing you can do is, if you see kittens in your local colony, trap and foster or adopt them.
Of course you won't be able to adopt all the kittens yourself and you are unlikely to find homes for them all, meaning that it is probably best to TNR the majority as soon as they are physically developed enough for surgery (usually around 8 weeks / 2 lbs).
But there are certainly good reasons to take in feral kittens if it so happens you're seeing them around and are looking to adopt anyway.
For one thing, it is one way of helping control the size of the colony, which reduces the chances of it attracting the attention of annoyed neighbors (who might be compelled to call Animal Control or -- and yes, this has happened -- get out the shotgun). Even if you only adopt one or two cats, that's two cats who aren't going to be reproducing ad infinitum outdoors and who will have lifelong access to food, shelter, and appropriate medical care.
For another thing, feral-born kittens who end up in shelters or Animal Control pounds (whether due to colony "round-ups" or well-meaning individuals under the impression that the shelter will find all the kittens homes) are at very high risk of being killed (in order to make room for more "sociable" kittens who come in from people's homes, and/or those without fleas or worms or parasites or other illnesses common to feral babies).
Some shelters may have fostering programs where volunteers or employees work with the kittens, get any medical problems they might have treated, and in general prepare them for successful adoption, but again, there's a capacity limit at work here. So in summary, when it comes to feral-born kittens, their best chance at life is going to be either via adoption into permanent homes or TNR.
Felines I Have Known Of Late
My own interest in feral cats began when I started noticing them in and around my SO's parents' yard. Matt's parents live fairly nearby us (in the same Silicon Valley city of Santa Clara, California, USA) so we've been over there a fair bit for dinner and such over the years post-college.
Matt's parents have also had cats of their own (or rather, been owned by particular cats) for as long as I've known them, and his mom has a long history of rescuing "hard case" kittens that weren't expected to survive.
Toby (their current feline-in-residence, shown below as a kitten and as an adult) was one that I actually caught next to their garage on Father's Day 2008. She was about four weeks old and had a really awful respiratory infection (it involved sneezing blood at one point) that took at least a month of antibiotics to effectively treat, but she recovered very well, and has since been spayed, vaccinated, and so on.
Toby when she was first found - tiny, unkempt, and very sick!
Toby as a healthy grownup kitty (we are pretty sure her father must have been a Maine Coon...)
I couldn't adopt Toby myself then because my apartment at the time did not allow pets, but since Matt's parents took her in I basically got to be Kitty Auntie, a role I enjoy to this day (Toby seems to like it when I come over because I am the only person who lets her play with the water cooler).
Then, on October 2, 2009 (after having seen a number of kittens coming around, and seeing as I finally lived somewhere I'd be able to house cats) I decided it was time to start taking a bit more in the way of action.
That was the evening I took in Coraline and Brodie (shown below, taking over my computer chair!), who have so far been doing wonderfully in their new home with me and Matt.
Brodie (L) and Coraline (R) approve of Ikea upholstery fabric
These two little ones have now been taken to the vet, where they were weighed, thermometered, stethoscoped, de-wormed, prescribed some flea treatment, and poop-sampled (to check for parasites, etc.).
And, according to their exam results, overall they are quite healthy. They are eating well, drinking plenty of water, and their weight at time of examination (about 2 lbs) was right on target for eight-week-old kitties.
The only concerns that came up were that Brodie appears to have a very slight heart murmur (which the vet said wasn't likely dangerous; still, I'm going to make sure it gets monitored), and that both kitties have coccidia (a protozoan that can infest the small intestine and cause gastrointestinal problems in kittens and puppies). They are now on antibiotics to inhibit the reproductive capacity of the protozoa, which should be killed off by the kittens' immune systems as they develop over the next month.
And as far as getting acclimated to humans goes, I think their actions speak for themselves.
Neither kitten has bitten me or Matt since the very first night, they're hissing less, and they're even coming up on the bed to play! Today I even heard purring for the very first time, after combing Coraline's fur.
They're also obviously getting more independent of one another (while still remaining very close -- they sleep in a kittenpile and groom one another regularly) -- initially they would cry whenever they were separated for whatever reason, but now they're occasionally venturing out individually to explore different parts of the house.
So, all in all, Coraline and Brodie appear to be well on their way to the happy housecat's life, and I am more than honored to share my home with them. Their situation is different from Toby's, as they're older and more skittish than she was upon being found, but it just goes to show you that given the right environment kittens coming from various sets of circumstances can thrive.
Then, you have situations like that of Susie (shown below, wrapped in a towel ready to take her medicine).
Susie was trapped on the same night as Brodie and Coraline. She is actually an older sibling of theirs (from the same wily mother), about seven months old.
We (that is, me and Matt and Matt's mom and a cat-rescue-expert neighbor of theirs who kindly lent me her humane trap for the evening) had actually been attempting to trap Coal (the mama kitty) so we could get her fixed, but Coal wasn't having any of that (my guess is she's "trap-wise").
However, it was also great that we managed to catch Susie because we'd been noticing her around for months and she'd looked to be extremely ill and in need of veterinary care. And, as it turned out, she was -- she had pneumonia, and weighed a mere three pounds!
Apparently she'd had a really horrible respiratory infection that had gone into the lungs, and her heart was having trouble too due to fluid buildup. Combined with the malnutrition caused by her illness (and the fact that the other cats pushing her away from the food), she was really in awful shape.
But, happily, two weeks of antibiotics and a ready supply of food (she's been convalescing in Matt's mom's house, where she mostly hides but is at least safe from predators and re-infection), Susie is looking amazingly better! She's gained at least a pound, her eyes are cleared up, and you can no longer hear her chest rattling when she breathes. We will find out soon whether she's well enough to be spayed yet, and if so we will get that done and then return her to her kitty family outdoors.
So, that's about where I'm at now with this whole helping-the-ferals business. Next on the agenda is to TNR at least two of the "teenage" cats that have been coming around and who look just about ready to start going into heat, etc. (eek!). I don't know how much of this I will be able to logistically manage, but I am figuring whatever I can do is better than nothing. Plus, it's not like I'm doing it all by myself -- it's really a collaborative effort between me, Matt, his mom, and the aforementioned neighbor lady, all of whom have different things to add to the effort.
In Conclusion...
Obviously not everyone can pay attention to every issue at once, and certainly if you are off saving the whales or advocating for healthcare reform or building houses in third-world countries, you should not sit there feeling guilty because you aren't currently able to help the kittycats.
But for those of you who are looking to donate some time or other resources to support your local feral cats, there are a number of practical and informational resources you can access:
(1) Alley Cat Allies is a group I just discovered recently, but I really like their philosophy and focus (that is, they oppose the indiscriminate killing of cats, recognize that feral cats are particularly vulnerable to this, and promote and provide educational and other materials to help people conduct TNR in their areas).
There's a ton of good stuff on their site, way too much to link specifically to here, but I definitely recommend checking them out.
(2) Neighborhood Cats, another group with a similar focus to Alley Cat Allies. They're based in New York City, but their site has some good info on it for people living anywhere.
(3) The study Evaluation of the effect of a long-term trap-neuter-return and adoption program on a free-roaming cat population, which came out to show an impressive 66% population decrease in one feral colony following implementation of humane colony management
(4) Your local vet office or humane society, from whom you may be able to borrow or purchase humane traps and get further advice on community resources. Many communities offer low-cost spay/neuter/vaccinate clinics, whether year-round or on special days, so be sure to ask about these.
(5) Not specifically or solely about feral cats, but Sarah Hartwell's Messybeast Cat Resource Archive is worth a read for anyone even remotely interested in cats. Ms. Hartwell (who is based in the UK) is quite frankly the most thorough and prolific writer on all things feline I've ever come across, and I would challenge any Cat Person to start reading this site after dinner and still get to bed on time!
* I realize not everyone cares about cats (feral or otherwise). Some humans might consider it a waste of time to bother with helping them when there are so many humans suffering in the world.
And, given the demographic variety that has historically tended to visit this blog, I can conceive of at least a few readers being inclined to make statements like "but if an asteroid hits the earth or we're all killed off by evil robots of our own creation, then it really isn't going to matter whether people now do anything to help cats, so why not just donate to existential risk management?"
And...in response to anyone thinking along any of those lines, I somehow doubt anything I could say or write here could justify my perspective to you, so I am not going to bother trying. Suffice to say that
(a) I think it's perfectly possible to care about and work toward improving the welfare of more than one species at the same time,
and (b) as far as "existential risk" goes, I'd say that for humanity to lose its capacity for compassion, or its appreciation of the myriad incarnations of awesomeness (e.g., kitties!) the universe has managed to evolve, would be a huge risk, certainly one as great as any asteroid.
