I’ve been trying to find a spare moment to blog out this presentation since it ran back in January, because it was simply awesome.
Do you want to stop the tragic deaths of shelter cats, and cut your shelter’s cat intake dramatically and almost overnight?
Maddie’s Institute presents Shelter Crowd Control: Keeping Community Cats Out of Shelters, a free webcast with Julie Levy, DVM, Director of Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida and founder of Operation Catnip, a feral cat spay/neuter program in Gainesville, Florida. Dr. Levy will give an overview and analysis of the community cat population and examine the principles and practicalities of humane cat management.
I will feature the bits that really resonated with me, but if you’re a cat person I can’t recommend you watching the on-demand webcast of this presentation enough. Just do it.
Presentation Notes
Cats are the only species to have domesticated themselves. Cats have been living very successfully outdoors in the periphery of human society for 10,000 years.
Stray cats are homeless pet cats that have been abandoned or lost. They give us more options as they could be put into rehoming programs as they’re socialised and friendly.
Feral cats are wild born and unfriendly.
Owned cats: 80-85% pet cats are sterlised (US figs), but not always before the first litter (so we need to bring the sterilisation age down), but overall we’ve done a good job educating the public.
There is estimated to be 10-90 million free roaming cats (US). The number of free-roaming cats in an area can be worked out using the formula; number of human population / 6 = number of free-roaming (community) cats
Solutions to our cat problems need to be very large scale, because the problem is very large scale. And we need to be targeting ‘the low hanging fruit’ (ie. the unowned population) to see a significant difference.
Public opinion: When people are surveyed ‘what would you do about unowned cats in the street’, & if they’re given two options (to reflect the realistic outcome for trapped cats):
– 81% chose leave the cats alone
– 14% chose trap and kill the cats
Feeding is a common activity. When they surveyed people – are you feeding cats?
– 12% feed 3.6 cats they did not own.
– About 50% of community cat feeders do not own cats.
Which makes us ask, what does the public perceive as ownership? And we can make assumptions about people who feed cats, knowing that they will only take ‘so much’ responsibility.
If we’re going to try an alter the situation for cats we need programs that are;
– safe for the environment
– affordable: cheap per cat solutions
– sustainable: colony management
– acceptable to the public
Historically, cats have been ignored. No community cats programs and those that did exist have been ‘nuisance based programs’ – ie. animal management responding to cat complaints/killing.
There has been no structure, long term plan or measurable outcomes. Options included:
– Lethal control: islands; poison/hunting/trapping – not mainland
– Culling via animal shelters: short-term nuisance not control population
The ideal option for cats is adoption, however there are not enough homes in some areas and truly feral cats are not suitable as pets (not a large scale solution to tame them).
When impoundment is the only option for feral cats, those cats face stress, shelters can become overwhelmed, increased disease exposure and low live release outcomes. Truly feral cats are killed as unhealthy/untreatable. Healthy cats are killed; not enough homes or rescue places.
‘Preventative culls’ stemmed from good hearted attempts to prevent potential suffering (ie. cats are better off dead than on the streets).
‘Prophylatic euthanasia’ costs taxpayers and animal shelters millions.
Is it acceptable that this is the only option we can provide in a humane society?
Trap, desex, release (TNR)
Goals
– non-lethal population reduction
– healthier and safer cats
– lower adverse impacts (poisoning the environment, improved public safety from disease reduction)
– reducing public complaints
We need to consider a new type of ‘pet retention’ program and start considering retention to mean returning cats to the community where they live (their home), just like pet ‘retention in a regular home.
National Animal Control Association’s position on TNR;
Operation Catnip
Free clinic for community cats
– Desexing
– Vaccination
– Topical parasite treatment
– 150-300 cats per day ($30 per cat)
The program uses hundreds of vets and volunteers and offered high quality care to its cat patients.
(if you’ve ever looked at creating a program like this, watch this preso; I’ve skipped it here, but its got a lot on in-depth procedural detail for running one of these clinics)
Testing for FeLV + FIV?
– The organisation does not test
– Cats admitted are generally healthy and to test each one is not cost effective
– They used to test, but they found they had a low percentage of infected cats – similar to the owned outdoor cat population (and we wouldn’t recommend ‘euthanasia’ for them).
– FeLV is primarily spread from infected mother cats to their kittens, so desexing the mother cat means no more infected kittens even if she is a carrier.
– FIV is primarily spread amongst adult tom cats fighting. Desexed cats fight less, meaning that desexing reduces the most common source of infection
The program is looking at herd health and has found it to be more strategic, and to be reducing infection quicker, by putting resources towards desexing than testing for FeLV & FIV and killing infected individuals.
Does TNR work?
First we need to specify outcomes.
– TNR improves welfare for community cats
– it preventing the birth of millions of kittens, preventing a lot of suffering
– it can be used effectively on a small scale (colony)
– while more and more groups are finding it working on a community scale
University of Central Florida
– 1415 acres
– 38,000 students
– they had trapped and removed nusiance cats, but students and employees sabotaged these by feeding
– an ‘underground’ TNR program started in 1991
– they went from 68 cats, to just 10 elderly cats today.
Ocean Reef, Florida
– a fancy gated community
– repeated attempts to remove cats
– Community Association decided to build a feral cat centre
– 1995 – 2002 they admitted community cats for desexing
– population down from 2,000 to <500 cats
There was concern about native endangered animals, but area has seen improved outcomes for those animals due to their being less cats to predate.
Alachua County, Florida
– Wanted to bring about a larger scale program
– Picked one zip code intensively
– Desexed 1,000 cats per year in the zip, for 2 years
– Referred all cat complaints to the TNR organisation
– Measured effect on number of cats compared to other zip codes
– 68% decrease in cat intakes
Duval County = City of Jacksonville
– Almost 1 million people
– 144,000 community cats
– Impounding 13,000+ cats per year
– Just 500 adopted
– Housing 200-300 cats per time (not enough staff or care to care for this many cats, was stressful to staff and URI infections were common)
– Very low live release rate (less than 15%)
First Coast No More Homeless Pets (FCNMHP) went to council to ask if they could get back any ear tipped cats to be returned to the managed popualation. Council suggested they take ALL feral cats.
Partnership between FCNMHP and the municipal animal shelter
– All feral cats turned over to FCNMHP: this primarily targets ‘nuisance’ cats, as they’re the ones people are trapping.
– Cats are desexed & vaccinated & housed overnight.
– Cats are returned to the trapping site. They are returned to where they were found (we’re taking them from their homes and the other cats they know, we must return them there).
– Rather than ask people whether they want the cats returned, people are given a flyer stating this is how the city has elected to manage cats
– Few complaints about the cats showing up again (much less than expected).
Results
– 15,000+ cats desexed
– 1,000 sent to rescue for rehoming
– 174 cats euthanised as unhealthy
– 59% decrease cat euthanasias at shelter
– Ran the program ‘on the quiet’ for two years
– Then updated council policy (then they could say – we’ve been doing it for two years and it’s working fine)
– Defined protections and requirements for community cats
Requirements for community cats;
– Sterilised
– Vaccinated against rabies
– Ear tipped
If the cats are thriving, let them be (don’t put too much regulation/paperwork in)
Animal control shelter implemented new policies:
– No hold period for feral cats or strays under 6months old without nursing mother.
– Due to the low reclaim rate and high euthanasia rate for cats, all cats that do not have positive, traceable identification… may be sterlised immediately upon intake and placed in the adoption area as soon as two days after impound (still have a 6-day required hold)
Image: Feral cats are not ‘suffering’
How do you convince animal control to stop receiving feral cats into their shelters?
– Offer a better solution – create a coalition and strong working groups to bring solutions
– go to the ‘movers and shakers’ of your community, not just the animal lovers
– Offer a pilot project & review
How do you avoid abandonment or neighbourhood disputes at TNR sites?
– Conflict comes from cats which are perceived to be a threat to public health or wildlife.
– Use discrete colony management & feeding stations away from public sight
– People dump because they don’t have alternatives; fear of the cat being euthanised; change these outcomes so people feel more confident about their options.
