TNR programs are gaining in popularity among many segments of the animal welfare community, but they are controversial.
Every trash collection night they’re out there, alley cats digging and pawing at garbage bags in search of food. Some residents consider these cats a public nuisance. Others take pity on them, leaving food and water in bowls on the street.
But a growing number of animal welfare activists argue that neither response offers a long-term solution to the problem of feral and free-roaming cats.
The best long-term solution, some say, is to have as many alley cats spayed and neutered as possible so that their populations can dwindle over time.
‘They actually have a van called the Neuter Scooter that comes around to pick up the cats.’ – Carol McNichol
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It’s a proactive solution that trained residents can use to cut the number of cats living on their streets. But this strategy has caused controversy in some towns where it has been promoted.
Tens of thousands
“There are tens of thousands of cats living on the streets of Jersey City,” said Carol McNichol, founder and president of Companion Animal Trust, a Jersey City-based nonprofit formed to address the problem of stray cats and dogs in Hudson County. “They’ve been living there for years, and they reproduce.”
Nationally, an estimated 90 million cats are living on U.S. streets annually, said McNichol. That translates to about 44,000 cats that could be living in Jersey City alone.
Two years ago Companion Animal Trust launched its Feral Cat Initiative, an annual program that trains residents how to participate in Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) efforts in their neighborhoods.
Although somewhat controversial, TNR programs are gaining in popularity among many segments of the animal welfare community, largely because such programs rely on spaying and neutering rather than having the animals put to sleep.
“Some cities think that if you just trap a cat and [have it put down] that will fix the problem,” noted McNichol. “Some cities will trap feral cats, take them to a shelter, and have them killed if they aren’t adopted quickly.”
Those programs, she added, emphasize adoption to deal with the homeless cat population. But not every cat will find a loving home. Shelters may find it easy to place kittens in homes. Cats that were socialized as kittens and had human contact before they became homeless may also find it easy to be adopted. However, feral cats – those that were never socialized as kittens – are unlikely to be adopted by families and are much more likely to be put to sleep.
McNichol said that adoption-based programs also don’t help to alleviate the numbers of cats living on the street long-term.
“Cats are territorial. So if you remove every cat in a territory, other cats will come in and take over the territory. You never can get rid of all the cats. And all you need is a couple cats reproducing for a cat colony to [grow again],” she said.
By implementing a TNR program instead, cats within a colony are trapped, neutered/spayed, then returned to their territory. They continue to maintain their territory – but are unable to mate with one another. Over time, the street cat population is significantly reduced.
Some advocate euthanasia
While promoted as an effective “no-kill” feral cat management strategy by many animal welfare groups, conservation organizations and the public health community have not been won over.
Conservationists have argued that feral cats prey on endangered wildlife and their fecal waste can degrade water quality, thus impacting human health. In addition, feral cats often carry diseases that can be spread to domesticated cats and other animals.
These groups argue that feral cats can, and should, be humanely put down to avoid these wider health problems.
Fostering the feral
Most residents learn about the program through word of mouth and referrals from the Liberty Humane Society, Jersey City’s animal shelter, McNichol said.
Through the initiative, trained residents have been given traps. Tuna, mackerel, and other types of fish are used as bait to lure cats. Residents are then asked to “shelter” the cat for a few days until an appointment can be made for its spaying or neutering. Companion Animal Trust has an arrangement with People for Animals, an animal clinic in Hillside that performs low-cost neutering for $65 and spaying for $70.
“They actually have a van called the Neuter Scooter that comes around to pick up the cats,” McNichol joked.
During their visit to the vet, the animals are also vaccinated against rabies and have one ear clipped slightly to identify them as cats that have been through the TNR program.
After the operation, the resident is then asked to house the animal for several more days while the cat recovers from the surgery. After recover, the animal is returned back into its colony territory.
“The cat never leaves the trap,” McNichol said, adding that residents are trained in how to feed the cat and clean the trap during the shelter period before and after surgery.
Companion Animal Trust has received grants ranging in size from $1,000 to $20,000 to help pay for the cost of the surgeries. The residents who trap and shelter the animals are asked to contribute a $10 copay per cat.
Companion Animal Trust will hold three more TNR training programs this year. The next training workshop will be held on Saturday, Aug. 13. Anyone interested in participating in one of the upcoming sessions is encouraged to call (201) 884-9649.
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.
Those cats that have learned to evade all trapping methods are the next generations to survive. Ever hear the old adage, "If you invent a better mousetrap nature will just invent a better mouse."?
Now, thanks to the supreme stupidity and ignorance of trap-advocates, we have a race of freely roaming cats in all countrysides of every continent which are passing on their "how to survive" behavior to all their offspring, both genetically and behaviorally. The next phase of millions of feral-cats won't even be able to be trapped. This is just how amazingly stupid trap-advocates are. You thought 150,000,000 feral cats (present USA est.) was bad? In colloquial terms, "You ain't seen nuthin' yet!"
There's a reason the phrase "hunted to extinction" is so well-known in all cultures across all lands. It is the *ONLY* method that is faster than a species can breed and adapt to.
Trapping and/or sterilizing and testing as a solution is a failed concept from Day-One.
There are now about 150,000,000 INVASIVE-SPECIES feral-cats just in the USA, PLUS 86,000,000 pet-cats (60,000,000 of which are still allowed to kill all wildlife), this means the population is already oversaturated for a long time. Nobody wants more than 86,000,000 cats for pets. There's only 311,000,000 people in the USA. 2 cats exist for every 3 people, from infant to senior. Thanks to those who outlawed destroying them in a more efficient, often more-humane, and more cost-effective manner by shooting them. While they also promoted their slow, random-chance, inefficient, and failed trapping programs. TNR people (criminally animal-abusive and irresponsible cat-hoarders in reality) will claim trap and kill is also a failure, and they'd be right. The problem has always been the trapping, slowing things down far below cats' breeding-rates.
Keep in mind their exponential growth-rate. An average litter of 5 cats every 5-6 months (some say 3X's a year), breeding as early as 6-months of age. 2 can become 42 (up to 252) cats in only 1 year. No amount of trapping them (if you could even get them all to enter traps), nor valuable resources (transport and vet costs, etc.), man-hours, nor money will ever catch-up to their growth rate. You have an ecological, human-health, animal-welfare, and financial disaster on your hands, ALL thanks to cat-lovers and TNR-advocates. The faster that cats are destroyed the better. Even using guns and having all stray and feral cats shot-on-sight we still might not be able to catch-up to their exponential growth. Not even until every last land animal (including humans) is gone from this earth, due to cats destroying the whole food-chain, with nothing but cannibalistic cats left walking the land. No exaggeration. Do the math. Ask any TNR group how many cats they've trapped. They haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the problem THEY CAUSED and are only exacerbating with their blatant lies and deceptions. Using the birth-rate [of (N/2) X 5)] every 6 months, guess how many feral-cats alone will be born just this year? 375,000,000 (1st gen) 937,500,000 (2nd gen) = 1,312,500,000. This is of course if they only breed 2X a year and not 3X a year. Add in the original breeding population and you have 150,000,000 1,312,500,000 = 1,462,500,000. Yes, nearly 1.5 BILLION cats. Got enough traps? Got enough centuries to trap them all while they're still breeding at exponential rates and still annihilating all wildlife? Trap-advocates cost you to lose the feral-cat-explosion race LONG ago.
On advice of the sheriff, I alone was able to completely rid my land of ALL these INVASIVE-SPECIES feral-cats by shooting. Cats had annihilated the native food-chain for ALL native wildlife, destroying not only all the prey that their cats disemboweled and cruelly tortured for play-toys, but all the predators that depended on that prey, starving all native predators to death as well. (Now there's REAL animal cruelty for you, caused by cat-lovers. They should all be in prisons for life.) Shooting cats is perfectly legal where I live, and is even a more humane method when done right than terrorizing trapping and animal-shelter methods. One moment they are happily stalking defenseless animals to cruelly torture again, the next they are dead and don't even know what happened. Making your land 100% cat-free is something that cat advocates haven't been able to solve nation-wide for 30-40 years. On my land only 1 person in only 2 seasons was able to accomplish what they couldn't attain in decades. Why is that? It's also been over a year since, guess how many replaced them. NONE. Another flat-out TNR LIE, their "vacuum effect". What replaced them is all the wildlife THAT *WAS* HERE AND BELONGED HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. It's time for you all to grow a spine and get enough strength-of-heart to do what needs to be done. If it's not legal where you live then use the "SSS Cat Management Program", for Shoot, Shovel, and Shut-Up. That's legal everywhere in the world. It may be the only thing that saves us from this ecological disaster caused by spineless and ignorant lawmakers, as well as all the heartless and disrespectful cat-advocates that they defend. Don't waste your time arguing with ignorant cat-lovers either, as I stupidly tried to do for 15 years. Just do what needs to be done FIRST. Only later, after you've made your land 100% cat-free should you take your time to try to educate the ineducable, as I am attempting to do now.
The Feral-Cat Solution:
Make new cat-ownership AND care-taking of feral-cats a felony, with fines and prison for anyone failing to comply until this ecological-disaster they created is brought under control by any and all means possible. Shoot-on-sight is without a doubt, the fastest, most humane, most economical (0.3 cent to 5 cents, a ONE TIME expense per cat, depending on ammo prices), and most effective method available. It's how I was able to LEGALLY rid my own land 100% of this invasive-species nightmare. (NONE have returned, the TNR-advocates' "vacuum effect" is a bald-faced lie. Native wildlife THAT BELONGED HERE replaced them.) This is the only method that doesn't endanger nor harass any other animals, as frequently happens with non-discriminatory random-chance traps, and is also the ONLY method faster than cats can out-breed and adapt to. (Cats that learned to evade traps are the next generations to try to destroy.) If it's not legal where you live then use the "SSS Cat Management Program" -- SSS = Shoot, Shovel, & Shut-Up. Avoid use of poisons if at all possible, that once entered into the food-chain, will go on to destroy more of the very wildlife that you are hoping to save from destruction by cats. Whatever you do, please bury or incinerate the carcasses so all the deadly diseases that cats now carry won't go on to further infect the native wildlife, nor any other humans that might come in contact with them. (Which now even includes the plague, Google that fun fact. Cats also pass their Toxoplasma gondii brain-altering parasites to your livestock through their cats' feces, which is how it gets into the food-chain and people contract it from eating undercooked meats.)
Following is some good documentation on the most humane ways to confront a feral-cat problem where you live, including the best firearms, air-rifles, and ammo required. Though avoid using their suggested slow and inefficient trapping methods that got us into the disaster that we have now. http://deenawinter.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/ec1781.pdf
The reason cats are able to breed out of control on your land is because YOU killed all the coyotes, wolves, etc. Please don't make cats out to be anything other than another creature in our ecosystem. The links you post citing studies about fleas, etc, are meaningless. All wild animals have fleas, ticks, etc.
People cannot just go around shooting everything that inconveniences them. And "cat-lovers" are not all lunatics. Though some are. (I prefer dogs myself). But what happens when my neighbor decides there's too many owls bothering his chickens? Too many fish breeding in his river? Etc.
Most people who promote TNR are on the same side as you (trying to reduce cat populations). However, they realize that allowing people to just shoot them is a mistake because a large percent of people are simply ignorant jerks, who will abuse such rights.
Many of these cats are domestic cats that ignorant jerks have released. Also, there’s a lot of photos and videos online of feral cats being domesticated and making their owners very happy. An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V0c3shTi-A
Think ahead a bit... if TNR programs are allowed to continue and grow, eventually science will find a more effective way to mass sterilze cats (via biotech or perhaps some sort of dna-altering substances which can be fed to them and will not affect other species). This sort of breakthrough would drastically reduce the problem for you and "cat lovers" who just want to end their suffering. But the basic concept of TNR instead of shooting needs to continue for that pat