Cat rescuer claims that there are more feral cats in West Yorkshire towns than normal

YORKSHIRE, UK: Debbie Newsome runs Henry's Haven Cat Rescue. They have a nice Facebook page with almost 10,000 followers. I have skimmed through the posts and I can see that it's a really tough job. They deal with a lot of quite sick cats and dying kittens and that sort of thing. It's a very tough world, the cat rescue world, and when you think that this organisation is run solely by volunteers and is not for profit, you have to conclude that they are fantastic people. They put themselves through distressing situations for the sake of cat welfare. They deserve all the credit they can get.

Conjunctivitis in one of the kittens rescued by Henry's Haven. Photo: Henry's Haven.

Newsome has been talking to Jasmine Norden of Yorkshire Live online and she says that they are dealing with an increasing number of cat colonies where parents and kittens are often seriously ill. The message that she is almost begging people to understand is that they must sterilise their cats because if you don't you get more misery in these colonies. 

The cats constantly breed and the kittens often have short miserable lives. They contract these classic stray and feral cat diseases such as the flu (e.g. herpes virus), which invariably ends up with a secondary bacterial infection causing conjunctivitis which damages the eyes and it sometimes leaves them blind which it is horrible. That said when TNR is allowed to happen some feral cats lead decent lives thanks to the volunteers.

Debbie Newsome spends her time trapping and neutering these cats to try and stop this cycle of breeding and dying after relatively short lives. But what is disturbing is that she says that there is definitely an increase in cat colonies. The article does not explain why so I'm going to guess and blame Covid. Covid has distorted the human-cat relationship.

Because of social distancing and lockdowns, the usual volunteers have been unable to do their job in TNR programs. This has left the feral cats to breed and suffer more because nobody is feeding them. TNR programs include feeding. Covid might also result in more people abandoning their cats because of financial constraints.

SOME PAGES ON SPAYING AND NEUTERING

Henry's Haven works throughout West Yorkshire. In the interview you can feel the concern in Newsome's voice. She said that people have got to stop the cats breeding and producing "unwell kittens". She said that: "It's all down to not neutering. If they were neutered, situations like this wouldn't happen."

Her cat rescue is currently working with a colony in Castleford and at first they thought they were dealing with four cats but have since trapped and neutered 7 adult cats and 5 kittens. She thinks there may be up to 20 cats in the colony in total. Some of the kittens in this colony had really bad cat flu as had the adults and there were "quite a lot of dead kittens".

The problem is that these cats are exposed to all the diseases around them because they have never been vaccinated or had any veterinary treatment. When one cat becomes infected, they pass it onto their siblings, while mothers pass the diseases onto their kittens.

Newsome said that she came across kittens in a hut. One of them was dead and the others had "green gunk" coming out of their eyes. And she said that, "It's awful because we're often dealing with picking up dead animals, it's horrible."

Some kittens do recover because they provide great care and some are infected with the feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) and are therefore difficult to rehome as these cats are susceptible to illness and have to be kept indoors. And in some situations they have to be put down because they are too ill.

Finally, Newsome makes the point that if people think that spaying and neutering alters a cat's personality then they are wrong. Their lives are improved by the operation. Personally, I don't like the operation especially on male cats but it has to be done as it affects their appearance. There is no argument about sterilising, however. It has to happen. And people shouldn't delay because if you delay spaying a female cat and you let that cat go outside it is quite likely they will have kittens. You will have more unwanted cats to treat, to care for and to rehome.

She says that people are shocked when they discover what is really going on behind the scenes with respect to these cats. She says that if one person changes their mind and sterilises their cats, she feels that she has succeeded.

Wild Whiskers of Tauranga, New Zealand do a great job in managing community cats

The photograph that you see on this page caught my eye, which is why I was drawn to writing about this rescue organisation: Wild Whiskers of Tauranga, New Zealand. In New Zealand there is an issue with feral cats. In line with their neighbours, Australia, the country want to kill feral cats and simply get rid of them in the most convenient and expedient way, which leads to cruelty. So it is particularly nice to read about this caring organisation, managed and owned by veterinary nurse Sharna Asplin.

 Wild Whiskers of Tauranga, New Zealand do a great job in managing community cats. Photo: Wild Whiskers.

Sharna is a smart cookie. She is very sensible and organised. Everything that she has said about community cat in her area is absolutely spot on correct. Every organisation concerned with managing and caring for community cats in the interests of the cats and the residents should see how she works.

She runs a volunteer-run group and they have two focuses. In the summer it is kitten season and over this period she uses her best efforts to take in feral kittens (she describes them as "wild kittens") and to socialise them so that they can become loved domestic cats in their adulthood. The kitten should be within that critical timeframe, the first eight weeks of life approximately, when they can be socialised successfully and relatively easily. It's much harder to socialise adult feral cats.

She has 20 foster carers across Tauranga who take the kittens in. They make sure that the kittens will become excellent companion animals and after that assessment they treat the kittens for fleas and worms and sterilise, vaccinate and microchip them.

They put them up for adoption. The other focus is during the winter months when they employ TNR techniques. They do this with considerable care and the involvement, wisely, of the residents. They make sure that the community cats are not owned by posting on social media. They also scan for microchips and if possible they place a "found cat collar" on the cat. They also contact local veterinary clinics. They then neuter the cats and release them back to where they came from.

She says that they only conduct TNR where there are proper systems in place, namely that there is a volunteer to manage the colony or cat and a regular food source so that the cats does not present a danger to native wildlife.

Sometimes they have to euthanize a feral cat because of injury and/or sickness.

She says that they have rescued, rehabilitated and rehomed over 100 kittens in the past season from October to April and they have trapped, neutered and returned adults.

She makes the excellent point that as these are community cats she needs to ensure that she engages with the community to obtain their cooperation. This, I'm sure, helps to avoid antagonism and it also helps to create a community spirit in dealing with what is a community problem. She says that if a citizen of the area finds a stray cat the best thing that they can do is to take photographs and post a description of the cat online. This helps to get the ball rolling because they can find out whether the cat is feral or owned.

It can be difficult to distinguish between a domestic cat which has become a stray, looking dirty and starving, and a genuine feral cat. People should not assume that because a cat is dirty and thin that it is a feral cat. The same by the way goes for behaviour. Often domestic cats can be fearful of strangers which is a behavioural trait of feral cats. For this reason, I have always argued that people should not be shooting at cats that they believe are feral (if approved by the local authority). It might be shooting someone's pet which has become lost or has been abandoned. Anyway it is essentially very cruel.

In acknowledgement of her good work the local authority has provided her with a $4000 grant which has been a great help to her during the coronavirus pandemic because it precluded her ability to raise funds. Well done to Sharna.

My thanks to Sun Live for the report.

Dublin Ireland: Poisoned Stray and Feral Cats

This is rather typical story of feral cat poisoning.  I hate to say it but the poison is antifreeze and it seems that somebody is putting down food laced with antifreeze which kills cats by destroying kidney function.  There's lots of this sort of thing about anywhere in the world. Note: the manufacturers are remise in not making antifreeze cat safe. It is possible.

The headline to the news story in the media is “people are devastated".  The people referred to in the headline are those engaged in feeding, trapping and neutering the feral cats who inhabit the Richmond Road area of Dublin.

Richmond Road, Dublin, Ireland

The headline is actually incorrect because some residents don't give a damn and some residents are probably quietly pleased judging by the comments.  The comments are very typical as well as the poisoning.  Whenever you have cat poisoning articles you can bet your bottom dollar that about 50% of the comments are for the poisoning while 50% are against it.

Those that are for the poisoning are, of course, people who don't like cats but more importantly they are people who don't like cats wandering around particularly into their gardens.  They consider the feral and stray cat dirty and disease ridden and a hazard to human health.

These people criticise cat owners who don't take responsibility for their cats by ensuring that they are neutered or ensuring that they are kept in; whatever it takes to avoid a cat colony in a public place.

This is the first time that I have read a story about a cat colony in Ireland being poisoned en masse. The stories that are in the news media on this subject often relate to the USA simply because most stories about cats on the internet emanate from the USA.

The truth of the matter is that the people who are sympathetic towards the poisoner do have a point and I hate to say that.  People who do not approach cat caretaking responsibly and allow them to wander are doing the cat a great disservice. They taint the image of the cat in the eyes of the public and give an opportunity to immoral people who don't like cats the chance and the reason to kill them in a horrible way.

There's no excuse or justification for poisoning community cats.  However, the world is very imperfect and although poisoning cats is a criminal offence there is almost a zero chance of the person being caught and a pragmatic approach is called for namely to tackle the root cause of the problem in the long-term which, as you know, is poor cat caretaking.

Cat Colony Diseases

Cat colony diseases are going to be similar to, or the same as, the sort of diseases that multi-cat households and cat breeders are subject to. A customer wrote about her purebred cat bought from a breeder: FIP In Breeding Cattery Cats.

It is important to note that in a study of feral cats in Florida, the cats, "had similar or lower prevalence rates of infections [for FIV and FeLV the targeted diseases] than those published for pet cats in the United States." See: Prevalence of infectious diseases in feral cats in Northern Florida by Brian J. Luria et al (Science Direct).

Feral cat colony. Longhaired feral cats are rare. Photo in public domain.

The way I see it there are two types of cat colony disease. There are the usual upper respiratory infections and urinary tract infections that all cats and particularly outdoor cats are going to be more susceptible to and we also have the deadly, some of which are highly contagious, diseases that are probably responsible for the majority of deaths. We know that the life of the feral cat is much shorter than that of the cosseted indoor cat. And it is feral cats that live in colonies. Colonies form around food sources.

These deadly viral disease would seem to be FIP, FIV, FeLV and feline distemper to use the shortened language of cat medical dictionaries. FIP is feline infectious peritonitis; FIV is feline immunodeficiency virus and FeLV stands for feline leukemia virus.

Below is the result of a survey that was part of a trap-neuter-return program that took place on Prince Edward Island, Canada:


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Data/disease/information	Prevalence - comment
% kittens 6-12 weeks of age that were trapped	25% of all cats trapped
fetuses removed during spaying operation	41
number of females nursing litters	14 - 7.6%
% of cats/kittens positive for FeLV	9 - 4.9% -only adults were positive
% cats/kittens positive for FIV	11 - 5.9% -only adults were positive
% adult male cats positive for FeLV	7.7%
% adult female cats positive for FeLV	5.4%
% adult male cats positive for FIV	13.8%
% adult female cats positive for FIV	2.7%
cats least likely to be infected with FeLV +/or FIV	younger cats, female cats and/or owned and indoor cats

I am not sure why FIP is not referred to in this survey. It may be because the subject of the survey was FIV and FeLV.

This page has a bit more on the subject: Stray and feral cat illnesses.




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