Posts tagged "feral cats"

Mike Tyson is entering the realm of reality TV. This doesn't surprise us one iota. Nor does it surprise us that there has been some controversy. What does surprise us is that the show will be on Animal Planet and is based on pigeons. Yes, really.

Not every dog lays around all day, waiting for you to come home. Take Rosie the Newfie, for example. When her neighbor became seriously ill, she found a way to lend a paw and give a dying woman a reason to smile by leaping a fence to visit the sick neighbor every single day. And her owners had no idea.

Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are really doing their part to make tails wag across the country. Ellen has teamed up with the USPS and her dog food company, Halo, to raise awareness and feed homeless pets a million meals -- all you have to do to help is buy some stamps! Portia, on the other hand, is focusing on the feral cat population by working with Alley Cat Allies to tell people why the trap-neuter-return is the best policy.

If you're seriously hurt, you get yourself to the emergency room, right? Sure -- because you're human. Well, an injured German shepherd did just that after wandering away from home. Fortunately, the ER staff took pity on the pup and he's since been treated by the local animal shelter and returned to his owners.

The illegal trade of endangered animals is common in the Middle East, but the UN is taking measures to eliminate the practice. Delegates at a conference to discuss endangered species are looking at everything from animal abuse on a small scale to the sale of highly specialized species. It's going to be a hard (and heartbreaking) battle, but we're glad to see the UN addressing the issue.

The city of Los Angeles has been barred from subsidizing a trap-neuter-release program for feral cats, the Los Angeles Times reports. A Superior Court judge sided with the Audubon Society and other bird and wildlife groups who opposed the city's support of such a program, which they say isn't effective at controlling the feral cat population.

According to the American Bird Conservancy (one of the plaintiffs in the case), this type of TNR program "turns cats loose so they can continue to kill birds. Scientists estimate that owned and feral domestic cats are responsible for up to one billion bird deaths each year, perhaps the single largest ongoing cause of avian mortality on the planet."

But cat people have a different take. The volunteers who bring about 80 feral felines to Sun Valley's FixNation every day to be neutered feel like they are helping their communities. Francis Battista, founder of Best Friends Animal Society, which helps fund FixNation, told the Los Angeles Times, "This program has been a boon to animal-control folks because it helps them manage an issue in a way that the community approves. If you take feral cats to a shelter, they're dead."

Cat advocates fear more of L.A.'s homeless felines will be euthanized as a result of the ruling.

Now that you know all there is to know about feral cats and TNR, why not go help some of the ferals in your neighborhood?

• The Humane Society of the United States offers state by state feral cat and trap-neuter-return resources.
• The ASPCA has a FAQs page dedicated to everything you need to know about ferals and trap-neuter-return.
• Alley Cat Allies provides information on feral cats, trap-neuter-return, and how to caretake a colony of ferals.
• The New York City Feral Cat Initiative has tips on how to socialize feral kittens, including some great hands on video tutorials, recorded webinars covering everything from how to get your community involved with trap-neuter return to what you need to know about ferals, TNR and the law, and downloadable PDFs (information to give neighbors, signs to put up to tell feeders not to feed during trapping) to help you during a trap-neuter-return project.
• HavaHart sells a Stray Cat Rescue Kit that includes everything you need to trap-neuter-return.
• And if you want to promote your support of feral cats and trap-neuter-return, several organizations offer merch with proceeds benefiting TNR and rescue efforts, such as FeralforLife.com t-shirts (above), Alley Cat Allies tote bags ($5), and USPS Feral Cat Caretakers' Coalition postage stamps ($19.10 - 21.35/sheet of 20).

When it comes to feral cats, there are those who do nothing, those who trap-neuter-return, and then there's Marc Maron.

Maron, who is well known from his numerous stand-up appearances on "The Late Show with David Letterman," and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," has kept feral cats as pets for five years. His fans are familiar with his cats through the stories he's told on his radio shows for Air America; in his act (including an extended bit on his most recent comedy album, "Final Engagement"); and on the new podcast he launched on September 1, the hilarious, raw-nerved, "WTF with Marc Maron."

In honor of National Feral Cat Day, Maron spoke with Paw Nation about some of the challenges of keeping feral cats, and why it's all worth it.

When did you adopt your feral cats?
I think I got them in July of 2004 or so.

What happened when you took them in? In your act, you describe them living outside your apartment in Queens.
When I got the cats, I didn't know that they were feral, and I didn't know what that meant. They were kittens. They were all eating out of the garbage. And I guess I should have known something because I trapped them in boxes with food. But I didn't realize that they were all wild already, even at that young an age. They're never going to be completely domesticated.

Were you able to recognize that in their personalities?
I recognized it in their personalities because none of them liked me. They wouldn't let me touch them; they would bite me; they would claw me. They all scattered and hid in different places. Monkey tried to jump out a window and wedged himself between the screen and the window. Two of them were stuck behind the stove for days. LaFonda, she's got, like, PTSD and I think it's because when she first got into my apartment, she got stuck on a glue trap. She was freaking out, and I was freaking out because she didn't like me and I had to rip her off this glue trap, and she scratched up my hands. I really think that scarred her mentally.

I started talking about it on the radio, and people started getting in touch with me. Cat ladies, 40-to-60-year-old women who hate humanity. One of them lent me a cage. One of them came over and we trapped the mother, and she brought that in to get fixed. She brought a syringe over and inoculated these kittens. And then she took one of the kittens that we hadn't trapped yet. It was a fiasco.

So which of the original four feral kittens do you have now?
I have Monkey and LaFonda. I gave one to a cat lover, and that one's well taken care of. The one that was really out of control, I gave to the deli across the street to be a mouser.

So, you've found a cat in your area, what do you do?

First, determine if it's a feral or a stray. The easiest way to do so is to put some food down near you and see what happens. If the cat comes bounding over and doesn't mind eating next to you, or for that matter, being touched by you, you've got a friendly stray cat.

If the cat bolts and won't come near you no matter how much tuna you've put on the plate, you probably have a feral. Other signs you have a feral: they don't make a sound and they only come out at night. Trapping a feral cat and taking it to a shelter will lead to automatic euthanasia, so Trap-Neuter-Return is your best option.

Alley Cat Allies has great tips on how to go about it.

Did you know that female cats can become pregnant as early as four to five months old and can have as many as three litters a year? Crunch the numbers and a single unaltered feral female and her offspring can produce 420,000 cats in seven years. Yowza!

So how are we not all overrun by cats? Through a program called Trap-Neuter-Return, in which volunteers (like you) trap a feral cat, get them spayed or neutered at a vet that participates in the program, and release them back to their original location.

Why release back?

October 16th is National Feral Cat Day.

Wait, National what Day??

Feral cats are felines that are more wild than domestic. They like the company of other kitties more than they do humans, and are more likely to run than come up for a scratch under the chin. They aren't dangerous or rabid, just unsocialized. Think of them as the feline equivalent of a squirrel or a pigeon -- they'd rather live outdoors than in a home.

While there aren't any concrete numbers on how many feral cats live in the United States, according to national feral cat advocacy group Alley Cat Allies, scientists estimate there are as many cats living outdoors as indoors (and there are 82 million cats living in homes).

Where do feral cats come from? The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) says,"Feral cats are the offspring of lost or abandoned pet cats or other feral cats who are not spayed or neutered. Females can reproduce two to three times a year, and their kittens, if they survive, will become feral without early contact with people."

Some ferals end up at city shelters, where they are euthanized because they are deemed unadoptable due to their unsocialized nature. The rest try to survive in abandoned lots, backyards or under caretakers who take it upon themselves to feed colonies of cats.

National Feral Cat Day is meant to educate the public, so Paw Nation is dedicating today's posts to the cause, giving you the low down on how to help feral cats through programs like Trap-Neuter-Return, what to do if you know of a feral cat colony in your area, and even looking at the funny side of trying to help ferals one kitty at a time.