August 29, 2009Comments are closed.cats
I’ve seen a lot of heated debate about the best way to manage the feral cat issue in Australia; with neither the ‘for cats’ side or ‘the for natives’ side giving the other an inch, I’ve always wondered how we’d ever move the issue forward.
This new article from Animal Sheltering Magazine is one of the best I’ve ever read on the issue. It outlines the history of the TNR movement in the US and demonstrates how groups from both sides of the debate have come together in 2009, to realise that in fact they both want the same things.
Feral cats emerged from the shadows in the mid-1980s with a grassroots movement to control their numbers nonlethally. The trap-neuter-return (TNR) method gradually diminishes cat colonies, as kittens and tame adults are typically removed for adoption, and the remaining animals age and die off.
It’s an innovative solution to a dilemma that continues to this day. Though euthanasia rates have steadily declined since the 1970s, even socialized lap cats often face slim chances for adoption. Meanwhile, tens of millions of street cats occupy the fringes of urban, suburban, and rural areas, subsisting on handouts or scavenging around dumpsters. They and their offspring often end up at shelters, adding more lives to an already crowded lottery for too few homes.
TNR’s pioneers recognized that cat overpopulation wouldn’t be solved without addressing the needs of ferals. They argued that removing the cats based on nuisance complaints created a vacuum for more cats to move into the territory and begin the breeding cycle anew. And they questioned the ethics of expecting shelters’ originally established as havens for homeless pets to euthanize an endless stream of healthy but untame animals.
But these early advocates received little praise for their efforts. The most heated criticism initially came from animal welfarists who worried that the presence of managed cat colonies would encourage people to abandon pets at colony sites. And TNR seemed to sanction life on the streets at a time when shelters were trying to change the cultural mindset, encouraging people to view dogs and cats as cherished family members not objects to be chained in backyards or allowed to roam at will.
“We considered it condoned abandonment, says John Snyder, vice president of The Humane Society of the United States’s Companion Animals section, referring to the organization’s early opposition to TNR.
“It was hard to reconcile our ideal of the safe indoor home with the TNR model, which lets the cats live outside and take their chances.
But just five years after the Feral Cat Coalition of San Diego launched an aggressive TNR program in 1992, a local animal control agency reported a nearly 50 percent decrease in the number of cats impounded and euthanized. Other projects across the country began to show similarly impressive results, while veterinarians Margaret Slater and Julie Levy wrote convincingly about the benefits of nonlethal feral cat management.
It became obvious that TNR was helping to combat cat overpopulation, says Snyder.
At the time, The HSUS was a microcosm of the larger debate. The organization’s wildlife staff were concerned about protecting all wild species, not just the rare and endangered ones, while the pet experts were thinking of the cats. “People were literally in tears over this issue,” says Stephanie Shain, the former director of outreach for The HSUS’s Companion Animals section who now heads the organization’s Stop Puppy Mills campaign. “What kept us pushing forward together was the fact that we all wanted to find a way to protect cats and wild animals, understanding that there are generally no simple answers to complex issues like this.”
I work for a shelter who lobbies local government for stronger cat laws, while offering nothing in the way of discount desexing, community outreach or TNR, simply because of community opposition to the programs. It can be overwhelmingly depressing to see just how far we have to go.
But this article is the blueprint to how we’ll get there. We may be running half a decade behind, but once cat people and native animal people realise the way forward is through mutual respect and cooperation, that’s when the full benefits of TNR will begin to be realised.
“It’s not about natives versus cats; it’s about protecting natives and cats.”
