Written By Patricia Bianca
First came Precious. The scrawny feline had sought the cool shade of my porch as a respite from the sun-drenched fields behind my home. Next came Chin, who set up camp on my deck to stalk the field mice it harbored. All was fine until the males moved in. Suddenly, I was overrun with cats.
It is a scene playing out all over Carroll County, where new development is rapidly replacing farmland and inviting urban transplants, like myself, who struggle to understand the intricacies of country living.
Barn cats and their wilder feral friends have long played a part in the rural lifestyle of Carroll County, patrolling acres of farmland and countryside, rarely interacting with humans. Genetically, they are no different from the cuddly indoor kitties that have become a staple of many American homes. From a lifestyle standpoint, however, they are more like squirrels or raccoons. They are highly adaptable and very efficient breeders. This may explain why feral cats seem to be thriving while the numbers of other species have declined along with the countryside.
“Domestic cats are survivors,” said Ruth Johnson, “and even your most domestic cats will return to its wild side [when abandoned by their owners]. They will set up a colony and when that gets too large, they will branch off.” Johnson is a cofounder of Metro Ferals, Inc., a nonprofit organization that was established to protect the welfare of feral cats in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area.
Feral cats, the experts say, live very much like a pride of lions, defending their territory, exploiting local food sources and breeding. In the right circumstances, colonies can become massive, with as many as 60 cats.
According to Johnson, the colonies develop around food sources. In the country, that may mean the birds and vermin of the fields, but in urban situations, cats will scavenge from dumpsters and trash cans to supplement their mousing.
Although newcomers are generally not accepted into a colony, left unmanaged, inbreeding can enlarge these colonies exponentially. Cats may become pregnant at a mere five months of age. They can even become pregnant while lactating. Their penchant for survival, and the irresponsibility of owners who refuse to spay or neuter their cats, have County officials overwhelmed.
Carolyn “Nicky” Ratliff, Executive Director of the Carroll County Humane Society, said that in 2006, the shelter took in 1,858 stray cats. “I’m guessing,” she said, “Most of them were feral.” Because of the difficulty in differentiating between domestic and feral cats, it is impossible to nail down exact numbers without any background information.
In fact, no one knows exactly how many feral cats there are in Carroll County. But just south of us, in Baltimore, Bob Anderson, the city’s director of animal control, told The Sun (November 19, 2007) that more than 185,000 of the animals live in the municipal area.
“Last year,” Ratliff said, “there were 1,468 cats placed in the after-hours room [A drop-off facility that the shelter maintains for unwanted pets]. A lot of people don’t have the kindness, compassion or decency to put their names down.” That is particularly frustrating to Humane Society staff because, by law, they must hold an animal for a whole week before euthanizing them, even if it is severely sick or injured.
Although Ratliff is a cat owner herself, she is very pragmatic when it comes to feral cats, “We don’t have anywhere near the manpower to deal with the feral cat population,” she said. Therefore, the shelter focuses on the many friendly, adoptable cats that are surrendered to them each day. Feral cats that cannot be handled and are, therefore, unadoptable, are typically euthanized immediately.
“It’s difficult for an individual to see cats that are out there and don’t have owners and not worry about them, so they feed them. It’s difficult to think about trapping them and having them euthanized. But these cats aren’t friendly, and there are too many friendly, domesticated cats in the shelter now,” she said.
Unfortunately for area residents plagued by feral cats, local Animal Control does not have the resources to go out and trap the cats. Instead, residents are encouraged to borrow traps from the shelter, trap the cats themselves and bring them in. Some county residents have expressed their frustration that traps are frequently unavailable for loan. Some are afraid of trapping the cats themselves. So they simply ignore them and hope they go away. In the meantime, the cats continue to scavenge, breed and pose potential health threats to the community.
According to Charles Zeleski, Acting Director of the Carroll County Bureau of Environmental Health, these dangers include parasites, infections and viruses such as rabies. “[Feral cats] typically aren’t vaccinated, although some are. Because their periods of hunting and activity coincide with raccoons, a number of feral cats do have rabies.”
Zeleski’s statistics show four cats in the county found to be carrying the deadly disease in 2005. His department investigates 400 or so animal bites and scratches per year, adding to his worry that someone may contract rabies from interaction with a feral cat.
But proponents of non-lethal feral cat management claim that Zeleski’s concerns are unfounded. They say that of the 38 laboratory-confirmed human rabies cases reported between 1990 and 2006, none were acquired from a cat. They also cite numerous studies that suggest that when part of a managed colony, feral cats are just as healthy as their indoor cousins.
Managed colonies are those that are monitored by advocates of Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programs. The programs, which have been used for many years in Europe, are on the rise in the U.S., thanks to groups like Alley Cat Allies, a national resource center for non-lethal feline control, and local grassroots programs, like Metro Cat Ferals, Inc., who use the protocols established by Alley Cat Allies in the 1990s.
These protocols involve the large-scale trapping of all the cats in a colony at once, treatment for illnesses and injuries, vaccinations, spaying/neutering, and returning a colony to its original home to be fed and monitored by volunteers. The ears of cats that have gone through the process are clipped, to indicate their status as a member of a managed colony. The approach is endorsed by the Humane Society of the U.S., and is being used in areas of Arizona, New Jersey, Washington D.C., New York and Baltimore City.
The goal of TNR is to reduce cat populations through attrition. Proponents of TNR claim that the program is more effective than euthanization, because a managed colony will cease to breed and defend their territory from outsiders. They claim that if you simply remove the cats from the area, a “vacuum effect” simply encourages more cats to take their place.
Ruth Johnson and her fianc Joe Lovchik, founded Metro Ferals, Inc., about eight years ago after Lovchik’s own struggle to deal with feral cats that had overrun his farm.
Johnson fields about 30 to 40 calls week from concerned residents, mostly in Carroll and Frederick Counties.
One recent trapping excursion in a small town in the Northwest corner of Carroll County, yielded 43 cats. “We could have gotten more,” said Johnson.
The cat colonies of the community exist not only along its rural edges, but also in the heart of town. One older resident, Donna, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, turned to Metro Ferals after years of frustration in dealing with numerous cats that she claims were largely turned out by neighbors. With no one to help her trap the cats, TNR seemed to be her only option. “Donna was a convert,” said Johnson. “She originally wanted these cats gone!”
Donna is now managing this colony, thought to consist of 15 cats, with the advice and assistance of Johnson and her volunteers.
Another volunteer in the same town, Sarah, whose name has also been changed, is caring for an estimated 40 or 50 cats spread across several sites.
Although she has been badgered by neighbors and the police when releasing the newly fixed and vaccinated cats, Sarah feels she is doing a service to the community at large. “These cats are already here,” she said. “I’m making sure they have vaccinations and won’t breed anymore.”
Cost is an intimidating factor with TNR. Although some funding is available to low-income caregivers, most will have to pay $60 to spay a female and $40 to neuter a male through Metro Feral’s clinics. The fee includes their vaccinations and deworming, but other health treatments cost extra, so if you trap 10 cats at one time, the overall cost may be daunting.
Still, advocates say TNR is is the only solution that truly works. “Most people do not want the cats to be euthanized,” Johnson said. “They aren’t going to stop feeding them. So what you have to do, as a community, is say, ÔWe are going to solve the problem once and for all.’”
Carroll County currently does not have any laws prohibiting the feeding of feral cats, although some of the towns within the county do. The ban is a challenge for some colony managers and a frustration for Johnson, who is trying to educate officials in the towns.
“I want to work with Animal Control and the Health Department,” she said. “We all want the same thing, and that is to solve the problem of overpopulation. Whether or not you care about cats is not the issue. It’s whether or not you want to solve the problem. The way it is being handled now is not going to resolve it.”
