Why we can’t just ‘get rid of’ free-roaming cats

Sometimes comments are so interesting, they deserve a blog of their own.

Jax says: I’m not sure feral cats living in supported colonies is humane. They are usually susceptible to disease, can starve, suffer injuries from other animals and are generally in worse health than owned cats. Not to mention the horrific effect cats have on wildlife. I grew up in the country & saw awful examples as a kid of feral cats just surviving with closed up eyes, bad flu. And I used to feed them! Sometimes it’s kinder to humanely put them to sleep as from what I saw their quality of life is poor.

Here’s the thing that Australians don’t seem to be able to get their head around… we don’t get to choose whether cats live free-roaming and unowned, any more than we get to choose the population surge of kangaroos on golf-courses, the boom-bust cycle of rainbow lorikeets at fruit harvesting time or snakes living near silos and farms because that’s where the rodents are. We have changed our environment in a way that works for some animals, has been disastrous for others.

Cats live where cats can live. If the school oval is covered with enough sandwich crusts to feed the mice that would support seven cats – you can bet there’ll be seven cats living behind the school canteen.

We can ‘choose’ to trap and kill those cats; and then when more cat move in, trap another seven soon after, and another seven soon after that… we can ‘choose’ to do that verbatim.

Or we can choose to desex those seven cats, put someone from the school in charge of them and try and make their lives a little easier. We can even get the carer to work on cleaning up the site, so it’s less attractive to mice. But this is a holistic solution about undoing the damage we humans have caused – not a choice that ‘we just don’t want the cats’.

While animal welfare groups like to blame ‘irresponsible owners’, that flies in the face of every study on cat population dynamics that’s ever been done – the overwhelming majority of cats entering shelters have never had owners. Blaming cat owners of WA (of which 88% have desexed animals), for the millions running wild across the state is like blaming rabbit owners for Australia’s population of wild rabbits. The two aren’t even close to being effected by each other anymore.

The government’s feral pest advisory group – the one who is given millions to dream up new toxins and trapping techniques, they say eradication in Australia is unrealistic. We have to move beyond thinking that cats live wild because the government hasn’t brought in a law, or because people are irresponsible, or because we just haven’t trapped enough yet. The science says we will always have cats living in self-sustaining wild populations in Australia. Now we know that – what else can we do?

Cats living wild are exposed to exactly the same life-hazards as any other wild animal. We wouldn’t suggest all possums should be locked in zoos for their own protection, so its illogical to think cats need to be. Certainly, they get sick and die sometimes. But of a study of 26,000 cats entering shelters in Victoria (one of our colder, harsher climates) 78% were stray admissions (unowned cats) and 73% received an optimum body score (healthy weight score). These guys weren’t doing it tough; they had an advantage that other wild animals didn’t – the ability to live in close proximity to humans and therefore receive food and care.

The biggest killer of cats isn’t ‘living wild’ – it’s being impounded and killed in an animal shelter.