Go on, admit it. You smiled to yourself when reading about the feral cat conundrum on Macquarie Island and thought, well it’s a small island, of course rats could get a toe hold there. But I live in a highly populated city – mother nature doesn’t push us around.
Tell that to the residents of Dallas, Texas;
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ABC Pest Control of Lewisville, the state’s largest independent exterminator, has seen its rodent business triple in recent years. Business skyrocketed by 60 percent last year alone.
North Texans have battled rodents for years. But signs suggest the population is swelling. Wild swings in the weather, the destruction of habitats by new development and plentiful sources of food, water and shelter have driven rats into places across the region.
The critters can breed copiously, carry diseases and cause extensive damage. And people are finding them in modest locales and the wealthiest of communities.
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The conventional wisdom is that rats only thrive in and under dense people-packed places like New York City, where food and hiding places are abundant. But experts say that rat populations are rising in urban areas from Boston to Los Angeles. The trend is especially true in the fast-growing Sun Belt.
But sprawling cities with warm climates like Dallas, Phoenix and Jacksonville, Fla., also are attractive breeding grounds.
As people embrace outdoor lifestyles by building backyard pools and barbecue stations and planting shrubs, they also create potential rat resources, experts say.
Given the explosive reproductive machinery of rats; a single female can produce dozens, even hundreds, of babies in one year populations can spread like wildfire, even in suburban areas.
People are planting fruit and nut trees with bird feeders and fountains to create these little escapes from the stresses of their lives, said Robert Corrigan, one of the nation’s leading rodent experts. The reality is they are building these wonderful rat mini zoos.
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Nice. Please come to my house for a barbecue and meet my rats…
But it’s not all international doom and gloom rat-wise. A recycling centre in the UK claims to have their rat problem nailed and it’s all thanks to Big Mama, Dudley and the rest of their resident cat- rat-catchers. From A tale of cats vs. rats in Epping;
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Jim Freeman said of the nine feral cats credited with creating a nearly rodent-free recycling center.
The cats are always on the lookout for tasty rats and mice, and that’s just what Freeman wants.
Freeman, the town’s solid waste supervisor, said the cats have kept the rodent population way down. In fact, Freeman insists that the Epping recycling center is one of the cleanest around thanks to the work of the feral cats.
“I’ve been here for two years now and in that entire time I’ve seen two mice,” Freeman said yesterday. “The trash is left here overnight and you can easily wind up having a really high rodent problem, but they keep it pretty clean.”
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The article goes on to describe how the business, with the help of local welfare agencies, had all the cats desexed and now care for and feed their cats and consider them a valuable part of the staff.
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Workers have made the cats feel at home. They’ve created a makeshift cat condo in an empty bay at the center, providing shelter by placing cardboard boxes under a wooden desk and adding a dog house. Blankets and shirts sit on the floor next to two large bowls of cat food. Two of the cats have found shelter under an old boat abandoned across the street at the dump.
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Now, as animal rescuers we obviously we want to eliminate the seasonal killing of kittens and we also know trapping and killing hasn’t worked at reducing their numbers. It also seems pretty clear that we need some cats in the environment because rats like living with people!
TNR is no longer the domain of the ‘nutty’ cat rescuer and it has been used and the results recorded for over 10 years in Rome. See the 2006 report, Management of feral domestic cats in the urban environment of Rome (Italy).
– First, they implemented laws which saw feral cats protected and cat carers become official organisations
– In ten years almost 8,000 cats were trapped and returned to their colony
– Cats were ear-tipped as a form of identification and any kittens removed and rehomed
– In 55 colonies the number of cats decreased, in 20 it remained stable, whereas in 28 of them the number of cats increased. One colony went extinct and in another case only 1 cat remained from a colony originally composed of 20 cats.
– The program saw a 16-31% reduction in the total cat numbers
What’s more, these cats have become a tourist attraction, with cat lovers from all over the world taking a ‘cat tour’ around the country.
Unless Australian animal rescuers start to promote the benefits of feral cats and see them as a part of the community, our communities certainly never will.
It’s up to us to improve the image of the unowned cat!
