There his is…that cat that’s been bounding around your neighborhood in the warm summer heat. Poor guy, one of his ears looks like it’s been clipped somehow. Maybe a fight? Common sense would dictate that someone needs to catch him in an effort to give him a new home.
Pet homelessness is a major problem in the United States. There are currently over 70 million stray animals, with only seven to eight million of them ever making it to a shelter. Speaking specifically of cats, only two to five percent of those picked up annually are ever reunited with their families. There’s still hope that those who are deemed adoptable can find a new home, but rates for cat euthanasia are very high at around 71 percent. So naturally, seeing an untagged, unkempt kitty running around the streets would prompt you to search out a new home for this feline, right?
As it Turns Out, not Necessarily.
Fluffy could be part of a TNR, or Trap, Neuter and Return program, intended to keep the free roaming cat population down. Cats like him are caught, taken to a participating veterinarian to be fixed and then their ears are either “tipped” or “notched” for identification before they’re returned to their familiar environment.
Why in the World Would We do This?
Living as a stray can be downright dangerous. The risk of injury and disease is high, making the average life expectancy of an outdoor cat only 2 to 5 years, as opposed to the 17 years an indoor cat can typically enjoy. It’s also no picnic for humans who have a stray cat colony for a neighbor.
Homeowners become annoyed with the smell of spraying and the late night yowling that unfixed male cats do around mating time.
It’s the cat equivalent of John Cusack holding the boom box over his head in “Say Anything” except, instead of sounding like Peter Gabriel, it sounds like a child has crawled onto their roof to have a night terror. So romantic!
So, Why am I Leaving the Cat With the Tipped Ear Alone Again?
There’s a big difference between a homeless or outdoor cat and a feral cat. Truly feral cats are unable to become accustomed to humans and will be determined un-adoptable in a shelter, which would cause them to be euthanized. Colony animals by nature, cats surround themselves with a group and then close up ranks, leaving newbies out. They then mate within the colony, multiplying their numbers drastically. In seven years, one female cat and her offspring can produce 420,ooo kittens!
Once a feral cat is removed from the colony their spot will be filled, most likely by a new member who has not been spayed or neutered. The population of the colony will continue to grow and the problem will only continue to multiply. TNR programs stop the colony growth and allow healthy cats who cannot be domesticated to live out their natural lives instead of crowding the shelters and ultimately being euthanized.
Does This Really Work?
TNR programs are popping up all over the country, from college campuses to more rural areas. One very famous place finding great success with the approach for years is Disneyland, who decided to implement a TNR program after finding itself with a feral cat (and subsequent flea) invasion along with a significant rodent issue. After the program was implemented, the cats were left to live in the park, hiding from the human interlopers during the day and then emerging at night to control the mouse problem (you’d better watch yourself Mickey). You could say that the “Disney Cats” are the ultimate annual pass holders!
What Can I Do?
First and foremost, if you see a cat with “tipped” or “notched” ears, leave him or her be. They’re very likely part of a TNR program and have important cat business to attend to. If you suspect that a large colony of unfixed animals is taking up residence in your neighborhood, look at the resources your state has to offer in order to help. No TNR programs in place for your state? Look into starting your own. You could be the key to keeping stray populations and euthanasia rates for healthy, but unadoptable cats low in your neck of the woods.
Lead image source: tnrofwarren
While overall the article is good, the sentence " In seven years, one female cat and her offspring can produce 420,ooo kittens!" is not based on facts. No reputable organization should be using baseless figures.
Number debunked in the WSJ a few years ago. Please see https://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB116058075161889442 .
For great info on feral cat and TNR info, as well as unscientific claims made by some commenters, like cats kill "4 BILLION birds" and the sad fact that the media don\’t fact check their sources, please check out https://voxfelina.com/
Free roaming cats, including cats that have gone through a TNR program, kill an estimated 20 BILLION (that\’s right, BILLION) animals every year including almost 4 BILLION birds. Here is the study https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-wild-birds-mammals-study/1873871/.
They should TNR the cat owners.
The best way to describe the report on that "study" is "Garbage In, Garbage Out". The story and study are not credible. It\’s flawed, agenda-driven analysis. The media doesn\’t do their due diligence when reporting either. Alley Cat Allies, the Humane Society of the US, and Best Friends Animal Society all responded to the Loss et al. paper. See https://www.voxfelina.com/2013/02/garbage-in-garbage-out/
Then there’s cats’ most insidious disease of all, their Toxoplasma gondii parasite that cats spread through their feces into all other animals. This is how humans get it in their dinner-meats, cats roaming around stockyards and farms (herbivores can contract this parasite in no other way). This is why cats are routinely destroyed around gestating livestock or important wildlife by shooting or drowning them. So those animals won’t suffer from the same things that can happen to the unborn fetus of any pregnant woman. (Miscarriages, still-births, hydrocephaly, and microcephaly.) It can make you blind or even kill you at any time during your life once you’ve been infected. It becomes a permanent lifetime parasite in your mind, killing you when your immune system becomes compromised by disease or chemo and immunosuppressive therapies. It can last over a year in any soils or waters and not even washing your hands or garden vegetables in bleach will destroy the oocysts. Contrary to cat-lickers’ self-deceptive myths, a cat can become reinfected many times during its life and spread millions of oocysts each time. It’s now linked to the cause of autism, schizophrenia, memory-loss, and brain cancers; as well as increasing the suicide rate in women almost 2-fold even though they’ve never suffered from any mental or emotional health issues previously. This parasite is also killing off rare and endangered marine-mammals along all coastlines and inland river-otters from cats’ T. gondii oocysts in run-off from the land, the oocysts surviving even in saltwater. A catastrophic ecological disaster of multi-continent-sized proportions worse than any oil-spill that has ever existed or could even be imagined.
Its strange life cycle is meant to infect rodents. Any rodents infected with it lose their fear of cats and are attracted to cat urine. scitizen.com/neuroscience/parasite-hijacks-the-mind-of-its-host_a-23-509.html
Cats attract rodents to your home with their whole slew of diseases (like The Plague from rats and fleas, many people have died from cat-transmitted Plague in the USA already, it is alive and well and being spread by cats today). If you want rodents in your home keep cats outside of it to attract diseased rodents to your area. I experienced this phenomenon (as have many others), and all rodent problems disappeared after I shot and buried every last one of hundreds of cats on my lands. Much better NATIVE rodent predators returned to my lands, rather than these man-made cats that were just attracting more rodents.
Another interesting experiment. They wanted to find out if dogs could possibly transmit cat-shat Toxoplasma gondii oocysts. A dog infected with T. gondii from a source-cat cannot. That stage of the parasite\’s life-cycle is 100% dependent on cat-physiology as its primary reproductive host. But if dogs ingest oocyst-laden cat-feces then dogs can pass the oocysts produced by cats & their common brain-hijacking parasite. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9477489?dopt=Abstract&holding=f1000,f1000m,isrctn
It is interesting to note that these Toxoplasma gondii oocysts shed by cats can even survive the hydrochloric stomach acids for the duration that they remain in a mammal\’s digestive tract. And then they doubt my words when I tell them of the studies where they found that this parasite\’s oocysts (seeds) can even survive washing your hands in bleach. You could wash your hands and garden vegetables in hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes for the same duration that food remains in an animal\’s digestive tract and even that won\’t destroy it. Your hands would be dissolved into a digestible pulp long before you could kill the Toxoplasma gondii oocysts.
Yeah, "basic hygiene" is going to keep your kids safe from going blind sometime during their life, becoming autistic, or die if they ever require any immunosuppressive therapies during their lifetime if they had ever played in a sandbox that a neighbor\’s cat has defecated in.
Go ahead everyone, drink the cat-lickers\’ Kool-Aid.
Someone who will save the life of a cat over yours is not to be trusted by any other human alive on this planet. Even cat-lickers can\’t trust their fellow cat-lickers to save each others\’ lives when it comes right down to it. Truth is, they\’d even rather that their own family and friends die (if they have any) than any of their deadly disease-infested cats. Sociopaths and psychopaths, one and all, right to their very cores.
And you, my friend, are a very sick man. I live with nine cats—all strays at one time or another. I have lots of friends, help the poor and needy, belong to youth organizations like the Scouts and Big Brothers. I help youth with learning disabilities. And I will save the live of every cat I can. And even though I disgree with you and have little in common (apparently) with you, I\’d save your wasted life as well. I\’ve had mulitple cats all my life and never had any of these issues and many of my cats came right off the street. You\’re creating a mountain from a mole hill—sort of like saying flying isn\’t safe based and what\’s happened in the last week or two. To say that you have to disregard all the thousands of safe flights a day!I feel sad that your hatred is so great…I hope you get better sometime soon.
Destroying cats is neither hating cats nor a fear of cats.
Why do mentally-unbalanced and psychotic cat-advocates always presume that if someone is removing a highly destructive, deadly disease spreading, human-engineered invasive-species from the native habitat to restore it back into natural balance that they must hate that organism? Does someone who destroys Zebra Mussels, Kudzu, African Cichlids, Burmese Pythons, Brown Tree Snakes, or any of the other myriad destructive invasive-species in the USA or elsewhere have some personal problem with that species? (Many of which are escaped PETS that don\’t even spread any harmful diseases, unlike cats.) Your ignorance and blatant biases are revealed in your declaring that people who destroy cats must somehow hate or fear cats. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is people who let a destructive invasive-species roam free that tortures-to-death all other wildlife, wasted for their cats\’ play-toys, that have zero respect for ALL life. They don\’t even care about their cats dying a slow torturous death from exposure, animal attacks, diseases, starvation, dehydration, becoming road-kill, environmental poisons, etc., the way that ALL stray cats suffer to death. They don\’t even respect their fellow human being. This speaks more than volumes about your disgusting character. People like you should be locked up in prison for life for your cruelty to all animals, cruelty to your own cats as well as all the native wildlife that you let your cats skin alive or disembowel alive for their and your entertainment. If you let cats roam free you are violating every animal-abandonment, animal-neglect, animal-endangerment, and invasive-species law in existence.
If people do hate cats today, have LEARNED to hate cats today, you have nobody but yourself and everyone just like you to blame. YOU are the reason people are now realizing that all excess cats must be destroyed on-site and on-sight. You\’ve done so much to make people care about cats, haven\’t you. If you want to do something about it, direct your sadly and sorely misplaced energies at those that are causing the problem, not at those who are actually solving it AND HAVE SOLVED IT 100%.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT and THE FAULT OF EVERYONE JUST LIKE YOU. You have NOBODY but yourselves to blame.
You can take that all the way to the very last shot-dead cat\’s grave.
Fraser,
Destroying cats is neither hating cats nor a fear of cats.
Why do mentally-unbalanced and psychotic cat-advocates always presume that if someone is removing a highly destructive, deadly disease spreading, human-engineered invasive-species from the native habitat to restore it back into natural balance that they must hate that organism? Does someone who destroys Zebra Mussels, Kudzu, African Cichlids, Burmese Pythons, Brown Tree Snakes, or any of the other myriad destructive invasive-species in the USA or elsewhere have some personal problem with that species? (Many of which are escaped PETS that don\’t even spread any harmful diseases, unlike cats.) Your ignorance and blatant biases are revealed in your declaring that people who destroy cats must somehow hate or fear cats. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is people who let a destructive invasive-species roam free that tortures-to-death all other wildlife, wasted for their cats\’ play-toys, that have zero respect for ALL life. They don\’t even care about their cats dying a slow torturous death from exposure, animal attacks, diseases, starvation, dehydration, becoming road-kill, environmental poisons, etc., the way that ALL stray cats suffer to death. They don\’t even respect their fellow human being. This speaks more than volumes about your disgusting character. People like you should be locked up in prison for life for your cruelty to all animals, cruelty to your own cats as well as all the native wildlife that you let your cats skin alive or disembowel alive for their and your entertainment. If you let cats roam free you are violating every animal-abandonment, animal-neglect, animal-endangerment, and invasive-species law in existence.
If people do hate cats today, have LEARNED to hate cats today, you have nobody but yourself and everyone just like you to blame. YOU are the reason people are now realizing that all excess cats must be destroyed on-site and on-sight. You\’ve done so much to make people care about cats, haven\’t you. If you want to do something about it, direct your sadly and sorely misplaced energies at those that are causing the problem, not at those who are actually solving it AND HAVE SOLVED IT 100%.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT and THE FAULT OF EVERYONE JUST LIKE YOU. You have NOBODY but yourselves to blame.
You can take that all the way to the very last shot-dead cat\’s grave.
FYI: "Nature Researcher"aka Woodsman and other aliases is a well known troll who\’s been banned from commenting on a number of sites for recommending illegal activities and describing and promoting inhumane treatment of animals. His replies are often pasted from other comments previously made.
You are a very sick man and I hope in your next life you will suffer like these poor innocent animals. Cats control rodents and it\’s a known fact. You are disgusting!