Crisis looms for 100 feral cats occupying Denver apartment complex

This feral cat colony at Cedar Run Apartments, Denver has been established for a long time and they appear to be accepted by the the majority of residents. Things appear to be stable with no need for change but the administrators of the complex have decided to get rid of them by:

• Stopping residents feeding them at feeding stations. They intend to remove the stations.
• Relocation the colony
• Bricking up access points under the buildings where the cats have made dens.

Some residents (and non-residents?) are very concerned. Relocation of feral cat colonies don't work well or at all as colonies have their home range with which they are intimately familiar.

Removing the feeding stations and bricking up the basement area will lead to potential starvation and exposure to the elements. All harmful actions when there is a much better alternative namely TNR.

I would expect the animal advocates to lobby the administrators to take a more humane view and instigate TNR. I would hope that they also consult with the residents to gauge their mood on the matter.

This story is very typical of many apartment complexes not only in the US but in other countries. The landlords of these apartment blocks perceive feral cats as very negative to the ambience of the place and want rid of them. They feel that they spread disease. But these fears are often ill-founded.

It may also be very possible that the presence of the cats deters rats and other pests. They should factor that into their decision making process.

Get some volunteers to help. There are many TNR volunteers in the US who'd be willing to start a TNR program. Done properly and the colony population will stabilise and decline in the medium-to-long-term. 

The cats will be 'managed' which will please management and the animal advocates and those sensitive to the sentience of the cats will be satisfied too.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also, sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. And, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable. Finally, (!) I often express an OPINION on the news. Please share yours in a comment.

US halts plan to remove iconic stray cats from a historic area in Puerto Rico's capital

Alley Cat Allies, an advocacy organization for the humane treatment of cats, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) to halt the removal of community cats from the historic district of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. The NPS had proposed removing an estimated 200 cats from the area surrounding the Paseo del Morro, a seaside fortress in San Juan, citing concerns over sanitation and the impact of the cats on the site. The plan, which could involve lethal measures, has sparked strong opposition from animal advocates and locals who see the cats as part of the area's cultural identity.

US halts plan to remove iconic stray cats from a historic area in Puerto Rico's capital. Image: DALLE.

Alley Cat Allies argues that the NPS's plan violates the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other legal protections, insisting that the longstanding Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) program, which controls the cat population humanely, is a more effective solution. The organization has also sought a temporary restraining order to stop the removal, citing the likelihood of new cats moving in if the current population is eliminated (known as the "Vacuum Effect"). They emphasize that killing the cats would be not only cruel but also futile.

“It’s a victory for the short term, but long term, these cats are still at risk,” said Yonaton Aronoff, an attorney for Maryland-based Alley Cat Allies. Aronoff said in a phone interview that removing the current cats is an impossible task since new cats would take their place.

“They’re going to have to keep doing this forever,” he said. This legal battle highlights broader debates about wildlife management, community values, and humane treatment of animals.

Puerto Rico is under U.S. jurisdiction. It is an unincorporated U.S. territory, which means that while it is part of the United States, it does not have the full rights of a U.S. state. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, but the island has limited representation in Congress, and residents cannot vote in U.S. presidential elections. The U.S. federal government, including agencies like the National Park Service (NPS), has authority over certain aspects of governance and legal matters on the island.

Sources: Alley Cat Allies and Associated Press.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. Also, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable.

Allegedly feral cats killed 145 young Cuban crocodiles at a breeding farm

The Cuban crocodile is an endangered species particular to that country with particular characteristics such as having the ability to leap high out of water and be curious and aggressive by temperament. Because they are endangered the Cuban authorities have been breeding them to restock the swamps. 

Every year, the Zapata Swamp Crocodile Breeding Farm, the world's largest Cuban crocodile breeding operation, releases some 500 Cuban crocs into the swamp, in the hope that they'll flourish and reproduce according to Etiam Pérez-Fleitas, a biologist who's affiliated with the farm.

And then suddenly, during October and November 2022, Mr Pérez-Fleitas said that there were a series of predator attacks resulting in the death of 145 four-month-old crocodiles. They believe that feral cats killed and ate the crocodiles based upon the evidence but there's no certainty that this has happened.

The clues that they have relied upon include:

• "Suspicious markings and fur recovered in the vicinity"
• Camera traps which recorded at least one feral cat entering the breeding farm's pens.
• And on one occasion "farm staff witnessed several cats feeding on something nearby".
• The staff members found "fragments of crocodiles".
• The attacks on the crocodiles stopped a month after seven feral cats were captured.
• And lastly, there is no evidence that other predators have been involved.

That said, they don't believe that feral cats are a major problem i.e. an "existential threat to the Cuban crocodile".

That's because these attacks occurred in a breeding farm, an unnatural environment. Feral cats would struggle to attack the Cuban crocodile in the wild where they are much more dispersed.

That said, it is another story which effectively attacks the feral cat. The feral cat is receiving a huge amount of negative press nowadays with increasing pressure on the authorities to do something about the large numbers of feral cats in many countries. 

Of course the problem is a human created one. What the authorities should be doing is educating people to take better care of their cats, to spay and neuter them, to perhaps keep them indoors full-time and provide an excellent environment indoors. They should do things to prevent predation as is happening right now in Australia.

The authorities should not be reactionary by which I mean going around trapping and killing feral cats. That doesn't cure the problem. What cures the problem is stopping procreation and preventing the existence of feral cats. Feral cats ultimately come from domestic cats and domestic cats that are carelessly owned can end up becoming stray cats and stray cats become feral cats. Deal with human behaviour to cure the problem.

And lastly, I think without being too harsh on people, we can put this alleged feral cat attack down, once again, to human carelessness. Why weren't the pens constructed in a way which prevented feral cats getting in? This breeding farm is not protecting young crocodiles well enough. I hope the authorities are looking at that as well.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

How long does it take for a domestic cat to become a feral cat?

A domestic cat can never become a feral cat but they can become a stray cat if they are ejected from their home, living with their caregiver. Or they might simply leave their caregiver's home. The reason why a domestic cat can never become a feral cat is because they have been socialised normally during the first seven weeks of their lives and that process stays with them all their lives. It means that they can be called a domestic cat.

The word 'feral' is sometimes used to mean 'stray' and vice versa. And there is a blurring of the boundaries between stray and feral cats. There is a spectrum of degrees of socialisation.

A stray cat under a car looking to to approach a pedestrian because they are looking for a home.

It is a process which is immutable and cannot be reversed. Although it can be weakened slightly. What I mean by that is if a domestic cat is homeless for a very long time they will revert to a certain extent to the wild and become somewhat feral but not a true feral cat.

The difference between a stray cat and a feral cat is that a stray cat will not be fearful of humans in a general sense whereas a feral cat will be.

Clearly, some stray cats will be more timid than others and therefore be reluctant to approach a person but this is different to a feral cat being genuinely fearful of people because they've not been socialised to people.

You must have read about socialisation. I will very briefly mention it here. It occurs during the first seven weeks of a kitten's life normally when they interact with people in a nice way by being fed by a person and/or playing with that person. This tells the kitten that there is no need for them to be fearful of humans. They learn to understand that humans are not dangerous and it overcomes the innate instinct of cats to fear humans.

The default position for a cat born within a person's home is to be fearful of humans. That's what you get without socialising them. Domestic cats wouldn't exist without socialisation.

Feral cats can be socialised as adults but it takes a lot of patience and sometimes as much as 18 months of careful interactions with the person doing the socialisation. At the end of the process the cat should be socialised and no longer fearful of people. 

However, sometimes they will retain a little bit of their wild character which may emerge from time to time despite being fully domesticated.

RELATED: 50% of stray cats have ear infections causing great discomfort. Are we happy to accept it?

There is actually a spectrum of cat types living outside of the human home from the true feral cat to the semi-feral cat to the community cat to the stray cat. The true feral cat is a wild cat essentially. The semi-feral cat is the kind of cat that is looked after by TNR volunteers. The community cat the kind of cat that is looked after in a community such as you find in countries like India where shopkeepers and other individuals feed community cats but they rarely take them to a veterinarian. And the stray cat, as mentioned, is essentially a domestic cat without a home.

All these types of cats living outside the human home are going to suffer health problems or are likely to because they don't have a direct human caregiver to check up on their health and ensure that they don't need to be taken to a veterinarian. I am sure that some community cats are looked after like this but by and large they are not. Sometimes stray cats are found in a community of feral cats being looked after by TNR volunteers.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Winnipeg will change the law to allow people to legally do TNR work

NEWS AND COMMENT: CBS News reports that it's going to become legal to care for feral cats in Winnipeg under TNR programs if the community services committee agrees to proposed changes. Why should there be a need for a change in the bylaws of the City of Winnipeg just to do TNR work which is a way of controlling feral cat population numbers?

Winnipeg, Canada will change the city bylaws to allow TNR programs to conducted legally.

Well, in Winnipeg you need a licence to own a cat or dog. This is unusual. There are very few cities that demand a cat licence. For dogs it is normal because dogs are more dangerous to people than cats but in Winnipeg they have some quite strict rules about pet ownership.

Because of these licensing laws, there appears to be an unintended consequence in caring for feral cats because it might mean that a volunteer becomes a de facto owner of a feral cat or cats. And therefore they would have to get a licence which is not what was intended.

In fact, it would probably be in violation of the current pet licensing laws to do TNR work in Winnipeg. This problem in the bylaws of the city needs to be rectified. People engaged in TNR programs and caring for feral cats have been pushing for a change in the law for some time.

One of those people is Lynne Scott of Craig Street Cats. She said that, "Anyone who cares for a cat in their yard becomes the de facto owner of the cat."

This can lead to being fined or receiving some other penalty. It's an ambiguity within the existing city laws.

The change will allow people to do TNR work and look after feral cats provided they keep their area of operation clean and tidy and do not build too many shelters and other structures in order to maintain the amenity in the area and satisfy residents.

The Animal Services General Manager of Winnipeg, Leland Gordon, is keen for this change to take place to make it entirely legal for people to do TNR work.

The community services committee supports the change and it should go through their committee successfully on January 10, 2024. 

They hope it will encourage people to volunteer to limit feral cat population numbers. Organisations involved in this kind of work will have to have a cat management program recognised by Animal Services or be registered with a recognised cat management program.

Sources: CBC NEWS and the City of Winnipeg website.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Amsterdam joins those municipalities introducing cat restrictions to protect wildlife

Although the world centre of domestic cat owner restrictions and feral cat eradication is Australia, the attitude of the Australians appears to be spreading to other parts of the world. The news, today, is that Amsterdam in The Netherlands is keen to introduce restrictions on domestic cat ownership and to alter their policy towards feral cats.

There is no doubt in my mind having read cat news articles for very many years on a daily basis that the attitude towards domestic cats has changed and continues to change. The direction of movement is restrictions on cat ownership and to, in some way, eliminate feral cats either as fast as possible or over a long period of time.

In Amsterdam a campaign and planning has started to encourage cat owners to:

• microchip and sterilised their cats
• keep the feral cat population to a minimum
• no longer release feral cats under TNR programs to "ecologically vulnerable areas"
• Ensure that owners place a bell or a collar around their cat's next to make it much harder for the cat to prey on wildlife particularly birds. Comment: the brightly coloured colour, an anti-predation device, is fairly successful (50% success) in warning birds of an approaching cat. However, bells are less successful because cats learn how to keep them quiet! Neither is going to work that well. And I can see difficulties in convincing a large number of cat owners to place a wide, brightly coloured collar around their cats' necks. It looks a bit peculiar and it certainly doesn't look aesthetically pleasing which is quite a big factor in the human-to-cat relationship because caregivers love the appearance of their cat. It is one of the important aspects of the relationship. I'm being negative but perhaps you might say that I am being realistic.

RELATED: Noticeable, brightly coloured, cat collar protects birds from cat predation (47 – 54% reduction).

Research indicates that in The Netherlands domestic cats kill around 18 million birds a year. That is probably an estimate and we don't know if it is accurate.

At one stage, a Dutch organisation, Huiskat Thuiskat, applied to the court to try and force the government to prevent people from letting their cats roam freely unsupervised. It didn't work of course. Cats are allowed to roam unsupervised because they aren't a danger to people whereas dogs can be.

I'm told that there are about 2.9 million domestic cat companions in The Netherlands.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Feral cats are becoming a nuisance at British military bases abroad

NEWS AND COMMENT: this, for me, is a slightly sad story but at least the outcome is going to be reasonable. 

British military base in Cyprus. Image: AP.

The British military have a variety of bases abroad in countries such as Cyprus where there are several and where they are the UK's main defence in the Middle East as they are just a few hundred miles from Israel. 

There are three bases in Belize. And there are also three bases in Brunei Darussalam. In all, there are four bases in Cyprus and my research which also indicates that there is a base in Canada.

The British military have four bases in Germany, three in Nepal, two in Oman, four in Iraq, seven in Kenya and one in Sierra Leone. A lot of bases and in total they occupy about 98 mi².

In all, they are home to 3,500 military personnel 7,000 civilians. The problem is that somebody decided that the feral cats are becoming a nuisance and therefore they are going to do something about them which I hope will be humane.

I'm told that they are going to operate TNR programs on the feral cats to sterilise and microchip them. The cats that are deemed to be in very poor health will be euthanised as I understand it. The project will take three years.

Sounds humane to me and let's hope they stick to the plan. They'll be using a contractor so someone will have to ensure that they act humanely and don't cut corners.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Do feral cats voluntarily come into people's homes?

Sometimes feral cats do come into people's homes. It depends on the circumstances. One of those circumstances is how feral the cat is. If the cat is hard-wired feral and totally unsocialised, they won't go into a person's home as it would be too frightening. Too many possible dangers lurking in a strange place.

Dorothy and Marvin. Marvin was a semi-feral cat that DW adopted and brought inside. He adapted brilliantly to home life.

But if the cat is somewhat feral and partially domesticated as is the case fairly often and if they are starving which is also pretty common, they'll take risks to get food and take their chances particularly if the home owner is apparently friendly or even calling them over and actively encouraging them to come in.

It is all about the competing feline emotions of fear and hunger. Both are linked to survival. The cat makes a decision on the best strategy in order to survive. Cats are great survivors which is why they have nine lives.

RELATED: Stunning beauty: extreme high grade 9 white spotting adopted feral cat.

Sometimes people confuse stray cats with feral cats. The stray is often domesticated and quite likely to come into people's homes looking for food or even a new caregiver.

Some cats can be quite bold in that respect. The almost ask to be adopted through their body language, vocalisations and behavior.

If the recipient person is in the mood to adopt, they do. There have been some great cat adoptions in this way.

But true ferals just run from the nasty hostile human! Well, not all humans are nasty and hostile but to true feral cats they are. They are an unknown quantity to be avoided.

So, that's the key to the answer to the question in the title. How feral is the feral cat?

The hypocrisy of humankind in describing feral cats as 'invasive' beggars belief

The Week, a website, has the title "6 of the most invasive species on the planet". The author lists the feral cat as the second most potent invasive species. And I've heard this numerous times. You hear this in Australia by the way where the feral cat is in general hated certainly by the authorities. Of course, the domestic cat is also an invasive species in Australia but you don't hear them say that.

Remember that the so-called "feral cat problem" is actually a human problem because it is of human making. This picture is in the public domain in my assessment.

Sidebar: let's remind ourselves that all invasive species are the handiwork of humankind. That's true to the best of my knowledge. All species would not have moved around the globe from one country to the other but for the movement of humans bringing those species into countries where they don't belong.

The Australians regard the dingo, as a native Australian wild dog species. But the fact of the matter is that the dingo is an invasive species because it was imported into the country 4000 years ago approximately, I'm told. In other words, the dingo did not evolve over hundreds of thousands of years on the Australian continent. The animal was imported into the country. Technically that makes them an invasive species.

But where do you draw the line? For how many thousands of years does an animal have to be in a country before they qualify as native? That's the issue and as far as the Australians are concerned 4000 years is long enough. Therefore, there is a limit. The term 'invasive species' is not an absolute term.

So, the feral cat in Australia is an invasive species because it was brought into Australia via domestic cats with the early settlers in the 1700s. That isn't long enough for feral cats to be native.

And the other problem which led me to write the title about hypocrisy is that this invasive species is the handiwork of humankind. The feral cat is the victim of humankind's carelessness. Humans brought the domestic cat to Australia and then they let them loose to become feral.

The creation of feral cats, to stress the point, is entirely due to human carelessness. That doesn't stop them being invasive. Feral cats, as mentioned, are invasive because there had never been any cats in Australia until the domestic cat was imported into the country.

But it does stop people, on a moral level, denigrating the feral cat and wishing to kill the feral cat in inhumane ways to protect wildlife. In hating the feral cat, Australians are indirectly hating their human ancestors. Perhaps they do hate them because they were British prisoners, were they? Perhaps the Australians have a real problem knowing that their ancestors were British prisoners.

Today, it is estimated that 20% of the Australian population are descended from people originally transported as convicts. Is it possible to speculate that the Australian authorities' hatred of the feral cat is because they hate their ancestors?

You don't carelessly take pot shots at feral cats - who are the victims of human negligence - which harms and injures them and leave them to slowly die because you are being negligent again. You are being negligent twice over and the victim, as mentioned, is the innocent cat. This is clearly immoral.

Paddy Gower doesn't understand why it's wrong to cull feral cat in New Zealand

My take: feral cats are killing native birds, bats and even dolphins - so why are Kiwis so mad when we cull them? https://t.co/ZXbwp7b4GI

— Patrick Gower (@patrickgowernz) July 5, 2023

Patrick Gower is a New Zealand politician journalist and National Correspondent for Newshub. Incidentally, I cannot access the Newshub website on which there is a discussion about killing all feral cats in New Zealand because I am in Europe (crazy I say). 

Paddy Gower. Image: Stuff.co.nz.

But as you can see from the tweet by Paddy Gower, he doesn't understand why Kiwis (New Zealand citizens) are so mad when the authorities want to cull feral cats because they are killing native birds, bats and even dolphins he says.

The reference to dolphins by the way is this: Toxoplasma gondii oocysts are shed in cat faeces (once and for about 10 days) and they sometimes make their way to the oceans where they can infect marine wildlife. Although it is very, very rare and they have been very few reports of this happening.

It's a reflection of his bias against feral cats. Although I can understand what appears to be his hatred of feral cats. He is passionate about conserving New Zealand's native species as Australians are with their species.

I am going to try and explain to him why Kiwis are so mad at culling feral cats. Clearly these Kiwis are people who are sensitive to the sentience of feral cats. He isn't. He practices speciesism which means he favours one species over another.

He doesn't mind shooting feral cats which causes a lot of pain and distress. Therefore, he doesn't mind being cruel to feral cats. So one reason why it's wrong to shoot feral cats or poison them is because it is cruel.

Perhaps a more important reason is the fact that human beings through their carelessness put feral cats on the planet in the first place. If somebody is careless and creates a problem, they then owe a duty to others to solve the problem in a decent and humane way if that problem concerns animals.

That's logical. That is common sense. Simply shooting and poisoning feral cats is not dealing with a human problem humanely. That's another reason why it's wrong.

And thirdly, when you go out of your way to kill feral cats in large numbers you cannot do it in a way which is precise enough to ensure that you are not killing someone's pet domestic cat. At a distance you can't tell the difference between feral cats and domestic cats. 

And if you have devices which chuck poison gel onto passing animals you are going to kill feral cats certainly but you are also going to kill other animals including, possibly, someone else's pet cat.

And it seems to me you might also kill one of New Zealand's native species. Those are three good reasons why Kiwis are mad or should be mad about culling feral cats.

But I'm afraid Patrick Gower doesn't get it. This indicates to me that he is stupid or he is too biased to have an open mind to what's wrong with the proposal to kill all feral cats in New Zealand in any way possible and as expediently as possible.

If you want to kill feral cats kill them humanely and do the decent thing which can only mean euthanising them by veterinarian. That of course is nowhere near fast enough and it will be far too expensive and irritating to people like Patrick Gower to contemplate.

Animal advocates say school kids swung around dead cats (they'd shot) in front of them saying "meat, meat, meat"

NEWS AND VIEWS - NORTH CANTERBURY, NEW ZELAND: Animal advocates were present at the North Canterbury Hunting Competition in Wellington, New Zealand. You may have read about this competition in which adults and schoolchildren under the age of 14 go out and shoot wild animals including feral cats. The kids were offered a £100 cash prize for the most cats shot dead! Great.

There was uproar about schoolchildren shooting feral cats. The first problem is that it indoctrinates the children into believing that shooting animals for fun is a good thing. Secondly, you can never be sure that you are shooting a feral cat or a domestic cat; someone's pet.

Animal advocates say schoolkids swung around dead cats they'd shot in front of them saying "meat, meat, meat". Image: NZ Herald.

Because of the uproar, 'on the ground' and online, the people who made the rules about the competition said that children under 14 couldn't shoot feral cats in order, I guess, to appease the animal advocates who were protesting.

But the adult version of the events still took place. Adults still shoot feral cats and perhaps occasionally someone's domestic cat companion. There is a photograph online of what appears to be hundreds of animals piled up as the end result of this shooting competition. To an animal advocate it looks disgusting.

But the point of the article is that a group of six protesters at the event were taunted by children who began repeatedly chanting the word "meat" while swinging around dead cats presumably by the tail. Charming.

It's reported that before they did this the children told the animal advocates to go and eat carrots and grass. They added that the protesters were going to die from a lack of protein and iron.

One animal advocate, Sarah Jackson, said, "The first thing we saw when we arrived was children having relay races with the deceased bodies of animals. These included baby pigs, rabbits and possums."

The organisers of the fundraising event said that the protesters had provoked the children. And they justify the shooting of feral cats because of the devastating impact that they have on native species. Comment: that does not address the problem of indoctrinating children into accepting what most people regard as unethical and immoral behaviour. And it does not address the problem about shooting domestic cats by accident.

So, the conclusion from this story is that the children concerned are beyond redemption. The world has lost them to animal cruelty. They will be cruel to animals all their lives and people are going to have to accept it. They've been taught that by their parents and by the hunters and shooters of New Zealand who see nothing wrong with destroying sentient creatures to protect native mammals and marsupials.

There must be a better way. I'm sympathetic about protecting native species but to do it this way is very crude and cruel. And it doesn't really work except to entertain the people doing the shooting. You can't simply eradicate all the feral cats in New Zealand or in a certain area of New Zealand by shooting them. They come back; they breed. 

There has to be a far more sensible, efficient, practical and long-lasting solution and of course one which is humane and decent.

Diabolical Australian shooters killing as many 'diabolical' feral cats as possible.

It is blood lust war on an unwanted animal. Sod the philosophical issues. Just grab the rifle and bullets and get out there in the Aussie outback and start taking pot shots at cats as fast and as furiously as possible. I can't watch the video. To sick and irritating for me. But it may interest some people and provide an insight into their thinking. Did I say 'thinking'? Not much deep thinking going on.

The caption to the video reads:

"In Shooting Cats, VICE set out to explore the consequences of Australia's feral cat plague, and confront the uncomfortable and violent realities of dealing with it. Most suburban Australians give feral cats little thought. But for residents of the country’s rural fringes, they’re a diabolical pest and scourge on wildlife. Found in 99 percent of Australia, they’re estimated to kill more than two million native animals a day. That devastation has seen Kangaroo Island local Barry Green declare a personal war against cats; trapping and skinning them, before turning them into hats and fridge magnets."

You can see that the people who made the video detest the feral cat. They don't ask deeper questions other than believe that the feral cats kills too many natives species. It would be asking too much for these ignorant shooters (they look a bit thick, don't they?) to think a bit deeper about the origin of the feral cat. Why are they there on their continent?

Because of stupid people; that's why. People like you. The cat is not naturally in Australia. They were brought there by settlers who let their domestic cats run wild and become feral. The early Aussie were stupid too.

As people created the 'feral cat problem' they have an obligation now to sort the problem. And as they are sentient beings the problem needs to be sorted humanely. But that simple truth escapes them entirely.

The point is that these guys love to shoot animals. It is a pleasure for them and the presence of the feral cat gives them a wonderful opportunity to satisfy their blood lust.

If it isn't the feral cat, it'd be the fox or the kangaroo. Just gotta shoot animals. Any animal will do but it has to be legal and it is legal to shoot feral cats in Australia.

What these guys are doing would be entirely illegal in the UK. They'd be in the criminal courts facing a year or more in jail for animal cruelty. Yes. Sounds weird right? But it is true.

The Australian animal welfare laws don't protect feral cats.

Criticising Patrick Gower for advocating shooting feral cats in New Zealand

Paddy Gower - I'm told on a news website - has 'issues' with feral cats. He thinks that they are dangerous pests and that they should be shot dead ('hunted'). They should be hunted to extirpation. I can't read the article on their website because I live in a region of the world where it is not published. I have no idea why they restrict publication of this site to certain countries. That seems bizarre to me.

Patrick Gower. Image: Twitter. His face is as unattractive as his attitude towards feral cats.

Paddy Gower's attitude towards feral cats is also bizarre. Actually, it's more ignorant than bizarre. But then again, it should be added that a lot of New Zealanders (Kiwis) dislike feral cats to the point where they think they should be shot. 

Simply do away with them. It doesn't matter whether it's cruel or whether they are euthanised humanely. They actually prefer the former method because it's quicker and cheaper. The objective after all is, as mentioned, extirpation of the entire species from their country.

This is along the lines of Australians. It's a cultural problem. They ignore the central aspect of their inhumane attitude which is that they, New Zealanders, put the feral cats there in the first place. They are the creators of the so-called "feral cat problem".

When a person creates a problem, they have a duty to clear up the problem. And when the problem concerns sentient creatures, they have a parallel duty to clear up the problem humanely. That is the moral obligation. They entirely miss this critical point. That's why I have called them ignorant and which is why Paddy Gower is ignorant. Yes, strong words but my words are very much in line with his words. I chose my words carefully. He didn't.

You do not advocate the hunting of feral cats. If you do that you are advocating animal cruelty. And perhaps more importantly, you are encouraging people to take pot shots at a cat at a distance. Some of them will be indoor/outdoor domestic cats and therefore owned by a New Zealander. That would be a crime. The crime of criminal damage as well as a crime under the country's animal welfare laws.

You cannot advocate shooting feral cats. Period. It is an entirely unacceptable behaviour.

Paddy Gower is advocating potential criminality in his shoddy statement.

Patrick Gower (born 1976/1977) is a New Zealand political journalist and National Correspondent for Newshub (formerly called 3 News). Prior to his current role he was Newshub's political editor. - Wikipedia.

When you shoot feral cats, you psychologically harm the people who care for them

Even in Australia where the feral cat is a pest to be killed in any way possible (irrespective of whether it's cruel or not), often by shooting, there are volunteers who operate TNR programs to manage feral cat colonies. One of these is in Newcastle, Australia and this study refers to them as the 'Stockton Breakwall' cats. Under the orders of the local authority the feral cats were shot at. The intention was to kill them but when you shoot at feral cats you don't always kill them cleanly; in fact probably hardly ever. You leave them severely injured and dying slowly. Barbaric, I say. Unforgivable.

When you shoot feral cats, you psychologically harm the people who care for them. Image: MikeB

This study says that the culling process was mismanaged. They say that it was mismanaged in two ways both in the intended euthanasia (laugh) of the feral cats concerned and in the psychological harm that this process caused to the TNR volunteers.

And I love this study because it looks at the effects of shooting feral cats from the standpoint of the people who want to care for them and who do the right thing. TNR volunteers are great people because they deal with feral cats humanely.

Nathan Winograd, one of America's great animal advocates, sets out six reasons why TNR programs are good for the community. A TNR program:

1. Improves the health of community cats;
2. Reduces intake and killing of community cats;
3. Reduces complaint calls to animal control;
4. Reduces illness in the shelter;
5. Reduces waste of taxpayer money on impound and killing; and, 
6. Increases opportunities to expand the lifesaving of other animals.

By contrast, he says that "lethal methods not only harm cats, they also harm people". The study I'm referring to is "The Impact of Lethal, Enforcement-Centred Cat Management on Human Wellbeing". Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13020271

In summary, they found that the bond between caregivers and cats was "as strong as the bonds with their own pets" and that the "the cats looked to them (the caregivers) to keep them safe and fed".

“I had a favourite called (Nala) and she was one of the ones that got killed… There’s people that really, really had such strong feelings for these animals… They are very loved.”

“They’re not feral. They’re pets waiting to go home, they really are. They’ve proven that to all of us that care for them. They just deserve better.”

“…the worst area. There was blood everywhere. All over the rocks, all over the pathway, like drag marks. So, once I’d sat with them, I’m going, ‘far out!’—something horrendous has happened here… I just started crying because the realization that out of the cats that were there, they probably only spotted about five. It was like, oh my God, what the hell has happened out here?”

“… two men came back in sort of like council suits, and they had some wheelie bins with them. They proceeded to scrub the blood away. They had cleaning products, and they were cleaning up the mess. We asked them what they were doing, and they laughed at us. That’s when we knew that this was something way bigger than we ever imagined.” 

We know that TNR volunteers give names to the semi-domesticated feral cats. They treat them as domestic cats and some of them are. They are adoptable. But they are living good lives in a feral cat community. The arrangement is beneficial for the human and the cat community. Why destroy that? And why destroy it in such a brutal and insensitive way?

I'll tell you why. It is because the Australian authorities across the continent have got it into their heads that they have to eradicate feral cats because they are preying upon their small mammal and marsupial native species. They want to conserve these small native species and of course I strongly agree with that objective.

But they can do far better in their objective if they looked to themselves and their behaviour. Human behaviour is far more destructive of Australia's native species then feral cat behaviour. Prioritise the most damaging cause of the gradual extirpation of native species which is human activity both in building new settlements as Australia is always doing to improve the economy and in terms of their contribution to global warming through the exportation of vast amounts of coal to China.

Australia has suffered from horrendous global warming events such as massive floods and intolerable heat waves. Look to yourselves I say and stop harming the kind and generous people who care for feral cats that were put there by human negligence.

It is unsurprising that feral cat caregivers suffer psychologically when their cats are shot brutally. The suffering was described as "significant". It led to "grief, trauma, poor physical health, and long-term psychological distress, including profound guilt, loss and the ability to eat" in the words of Nathan Winograd. Stop it!! You are insensitive and frankly ignorant when you order shooters to kill feral cats.

And what about the mistakes? Shooting someone's pet cat which must happen. Then you harm the owner psychologically as well. 

And what about shooting millions of kangaroos? 

Domestic and feral cats are a political hot potato in New Zealand

OPINION: Do you remember the recent furore over the competition for New Zealand's schoolkids in which they had to shoot feral cats with either an air rifle or a .22 calibre rifle (or any other calibre I guess). The competition was pulled because of press coverage and the fact that there were fears that the children would be shooting people's pets because you can't tell the difference between a domestic cat and a feral cat at the kind of range you would be at when shooting at them with a rifle. 

RELATED: New Zealand’s junior school kids love to shoot cats for prize money.

NZ pest controller holds feral cats. This is cruel and unfair on cats. Image: The Press.

Shooting domestic cats in New Zealand is a serious crime. The organisers were asking kids to commit a serious crime! Thoughtless comes to mind. But the Kiwis have a cruel attitude towards feral cats as is seen in the photos above. It is identical in Australia. The mindset is inhumane and in my honest opinion immoral and crude. It is the kind of mindset which generates the idea of the competition mentioned in the first para.

The idea of the competition itself was ridiculous and it should never have been proposed. But the problem is that animal lovers and animal advocates saw the madness in it and criticised the organisers online and social media. There were some tough criticisms even death threats I believe. And on the other side of the fence, there are those who supported this kind of competition. Society is split on feral cats.

The stuff.co.nz website reports that:

"Several organisations contacted by Stuff said they had views they’d love to share regarding feral cats, but couldn’t do so for fear of being 'personally abused' or 'targeted by crazy cat-lovers'".

You can see the problem. The issue of domestic cats becoming feral cats and feral cats killing wildlife has become a political hot potato in New Zealand as is the case in Australia. It is tricky for a politician to please two factions with such diverging views.

And the article on stuff.co.nz say that the numbers are scary. They said that there is an estimated 2.5 million wild and feral cats in New Zealand. Note the word "estimated". They don't know how many there are. If you don't know how many there are they can't say it is scary! You got to have the facts to hand.

And the same problem goes for estimating the number of native species killed by feral cats in New Zealand. They don't know the numbers.

What annoys me is that journalists like the one who wrote the stuff.co.nz article don't know the facts. No one does. They are all estimates. But they regurgitate them as if they are facts.

The first thing that the New Zealand's authorities need to do is to work out accurately how many feral cats there are in New Zealand. They need to get a handle on the problem. They need to stop speculating.

And the competition I refer to above basically indoctrinates children to hate feral cats. And it might be fair to say that if they hate feral cats, they are going to at least dislike domestic cats and the owners who have them. After all, domestic cats are the source of feral cats.

I don't think it is wise and sensible or indeed fair to indoctrinate children like this. It's important to protect New Zealand's native species of course but you can't do that while being cruel to feral cats which were put there by careless cat ownership. The root cause of the problem is people. The cat is the innocent victim in all this.

Alonso High School janitor admits shooting at cats with pellet gun and faces the sack and immigration issues

The report is contained in the video. The story is a bit strange for the reason that this man appears to have jeopardized his right to remain in the USA (immigration detention hold) and will acquire a criminal conviction all because he does not like cats and likes to shoot a rifle. One word comes to mind: pathetic. He has been charged with a felony: aggravated cruelty to animals.

A TNR volunteer woman features in the video and she's great. I love her. She was very relieved that the cat shooter has been found and arrested. 

For TNR volunteers it is the worst kind of nightmare. She said that her job is to keep the stray cat population down and the stray cats come from people leaving them behind when they move on.  And this seemed feasible because this is a mobile home park.

Although, I thought they were static mobile homes. Perhaps they are or perhaps they are truly mobile. Or perhaps the kind of people living in the mobile homes at this park are transient. They move around a lot and adopt a cat while they are at the park and leave them behind when they move on.

The exact cause of the stray cat population is not stated but it comes down to cat abandonment and the TNR lady is picking up the pieces.

Two New Jersey towns support TNR with one trying and rejecting a trap/kill policy

NEWS AND COMMENT: This story concerns a couple of New Jersey, USA towns. One of them is Bayonne, a city in Hudson County and the other is actually described as a borough and it is Matawan. The latter tried to introduce, in a ham-fisted way, a feral cat trap/kill program which backfired badly.

Matawan

The borough administrators introduced an ordinance which said that they were going to trap stray cats and if nobody claimed them within seven days, they would kill them. And in a badly mismanaged way, they said that the Monmouth County SPCA would do the trapping and killing without consulting with them in the first place. And secondly, they employed the local police force to distribute notices about their new but flawed campaign.

From Facebook.

It all blew up in their face when the SPCA complained bitterly that they hadn't been consulted and the public rebuffed them. The police had to make a statement to say that they weren't involved in the killing of cats. Clearly, the campaign did the police no favours as it damaged their reputation.

Anyway, the mismanaged campaign, organised by Scott Carew (as I understand it), the borough's business administrator together with the animal control officer and councilwoman Melanie Wang, was abandoned without any stray or feral cats being trapped.

They made a U-turn on realising their error and have decided to introduce a new ordnance which focuses on TNR (trap-neuter-release). That's the way to go. But it took the public and the SPCA to teach them that lesson.

Humane and ethical approach

The public are concerned about feral and stray cats. Some people hate them while others are more sensitive towards their needs. But in general, the public want feral cats dealt with humanely. They realise that careless human cat ownership put them there in the first place and secondly, they are sentient beings. The ethical way to deal with feral cats is TNR. It is the only current way, but it requires a good investment and the involvement of the local authority.

This leads me nicely to another story from the same state, New Jersey, which reports that Bayonne's city council has decided to continue with a TNR program which is managed by the New Jersey Humane Society.

Bayonne

They have consistently put in sufficient funds (it seems to me) to run the program. This is a commitment from the local authority to fund TNR and they're using somebody who they respect, Geoffrey Santini, the city's animal control officer who works at the New Jersey Humane Society, to organise the TNR program.

Mr Santini is described by Bayonne's Municipal Services Director Suzanne Cavanaugh as a "lovely gentleman, and he is excellent at what he does. He is a true partner with the city of Bayonne."

That's how it should be done in my view. You have a city council or county council who are focused on TNR to control feral cat numbers. They fund it consistently and they work with the best people to arrange and manage the TNR programs.

According to the report, in the Hudson Reporter, the city has consistently funded TNR and recently agreed to an addendum to the ordnance to add a further $25,000 to the program. The program commenced, as I understand it, in April 2021 when it was funded with taxpayers money amounting to $54,123.

Comment: perhaps local administrators are realising that TNR is the only way forward. It has its flaws according to ornithologists and others because in essence you are putting feral cats back on the ground where they can continue to prey upon wildlife. But patience is required and consistency. Armed with these two qualities TNR works if funded properly.

It needs to be as widespread as possible to be as effective as possible. It is the only way to deal with feral cats currently until something better comes out such as contraception (drug placed in food) which doesn't work well enough.

There are other instances of councils trying to trap and kill feral cats, but they almost invariably end up with a backlash from the public who complain because, as stated, the majority of the public are against the cruelty of trap and kill policies.

Domestic cats caught in trap and kill programmes

And there is always the potential for killing a person's cat companion. There are still places where there are indoor/outdoor cats, and you cannot tell the difference between a feral cat and an outdoor domestic cat (pre-TNR which ear tips ferals). You don't want to kill someone's pet because that would be a catastrophe and it would open the doors to a criminal charge against the local authority for criminal damage.

Uncontrolled sibling breeding evident in this black cat brigade

The problem of uncontrolled breeding of unowned (and owned cats regrettably) is very evident in this picture of a group of black cats in the US on a country road.  They all look the same down to the spot of white on their chest on some individuals. 

RELATED: How fast do cats breed?

They are all closely related, parents and siblings.

The capacity of the domestic cat and domestic cats turned stray and feral to procreate is one of the big challenges of humankind. 

RELATED: Female feral cats avoid inbreeding in colonies.

Uncontrolled breeding in a colony of feral cats all of which look the same or very similar. Image: see embossed credit.

Apparently, we are not entirely capable of controlling it despite widespread spaying and neutering. 

A failure to sterilise is the cause of cat hoarders ending up in a massive mess and cruelly neglecting their cats. The opposite is achieved with well manages TNR programs supported by the local authority.

The benefits of controlling cat procreation are seen in TNR.

A tiny minority of cat people believe that a female cat needs to have one litter before feeling whole. This single incorrect superstition is the cause of hundreds of thousands of unwanted cats leading to many feral cats and in turn plenty of feline misery.

Some human thoughts are really silly and dangerous.

There are some interesting and technical downsides to universal spaying of female cats and neutering of male cats.

The most docile and friendliest cats are going to be captured and neutered while the wildest and meanest avoid people and are harder to capture and sterilise. This could lead to pushing the cat's evolution away from where we want it: more adoptable cats.

Also, if there were 100% sterilisation and no breeders the domestic cat would eventually become extinct. Not much chance of that bearing in mind that there are an estimated up to 500 million domestic, stray and feral cats on the planet.

Ingrid Newkirk, the co-founder of PETA would probably like the gradual extinction of the domestic cat as she is firmly against cat domestication. 

Click on this link to read four of her quotes and some comments on them.

Cougars in Australia? I think not.

In the news today there is the story of a "giant cat spotted in Western Australia". It was seen near the town of Lancelin, Western Australia. A security camera captured the animal in the distance. The camera appears to be on the property of Wayne and Helen Gardiner. They say that the cat was about 50-60 m away.

Is this a CCTV image of a mountain lion (puma) in Australia? No, is my response. Image: Mr and Mrs Gardiner and ABC News.

As usual, the image quality is very poor. In every single photograph of an unusual wild cat sighting the image quality is very poor which makes it impossible to be certain about what we are looking at (but we can almost always guess accurately). This is highly convenient!

It is said that people have occasionally reported sightings of mountain lions in Australia because some believe that the cat was brought over by the US during World War II as a mascot! Sounds plausible? I don't think so.

If and when they are seen it is normally in Western Australia. There has been at least one "compelling report" made annually.

As expected, nobody in Australia has ever captured a mountain lion on a camera in decent quality.

This is a news media story. If you look at the cat carefully and view it in relation to the shrubbery behind it and in front of it, we can see right away that it is not a mountain lion. 

The plants in front of the cat are probably about 15-20 inches high. That is a good way to scale the size of this cat which appears to be around 17 inches tall to the shoulder which would represent the size of a very large feral cat.

We know that there are very large feral cats in Australia. Sometimes they can be unusually large because they are feeding on an abundance of prey animals. Therefore, over a long period of time, the feral cats of Australia have evolved to be much larger than your normal feral cat in other parts of the world. It is said that they are twice the normal size.

The mountain lion is one of the world's biggest cats. They are clearly much smaller than the Bengal tiger for instance but still substantially larger than the cat we see in the image.

And if they genuinely were mountain lions in Western Australia you would think that somebody would have captured the animal on camera at least once since World War II! It is difficult to miss such a large cat and certainly one which is so definitively out of place in Australia.

There are no wild cat species living on the Australian continent. There never has been because the continent drifted away from the mainland before wild cat species on the mainland had a chance to travel to the area of the world that became Australia. In short, there was a water barrier and there still is between what I call the 'mainland' and the Australian continent which is an island.

Humans moan about feral cats, but human carelessness created them

Every day on the online news media - every damned day (yes, I am annoyed) - we see hundreds of articles on local, state and federal newspapers and from other countries particularly Australia, about feral cats and the nuisance that they cause. The biggest complaint about feral cats is that they kill birds. But of course, they kill other animals too, sometimes native species, which really irritates local authorities and going higher up to federal authorities.

This sort of picture annoys millions of people, and they blame the feral cat. Let's go one back and blame the people who are careless cat owners. Image in the public domain.

They moan and moan and they criticise feral cats over and over again. The dreaded feral cat is a constant concern to the authorities. They speak of feral cats as if they are monsters from another planet. They just arrived out of the ether, and they are a damned nuisance.

The old saying 'don't shoot the messenger' comes to mind. The feral cat is the bringer of bad news to people in the community. They don't tell citizens the bad news through vocalisations but by their presence. The bad news is that careless people created the feral cat.

But it would help if the people who moan about feral cats sat down and counted to ten and reflected on why feral cats exist and the reason is...wait for it...human carelessness and negligence. They should then moan about the people who caused the feral cat problem! And leave the innocent, persecuted victim - the cat and the messenger - alone or at least treat them decently unlike the bloody Aussies.

If the news media and the local authorities are going to moan about feral cats, they have to moan about people as well because they are the root cause of the problem.

And I want to see some more moaning about people and I don't want to see the feral cat victimised over and over again by ignorant journalists who don't really get to the bottom of these problems. They simply regurgitate what they read on some other online news media site. The articles are often written by a person with very skimpy knowledge of cats and without an opinion of their own.

Let's drill down and see why feral cats exist. It goes back to the beginning in Australia when migrants came to the country, but the problem has been perpetuated and exacerbated to further carelessness in domestic cat ownership and therefore when you talk about feral cat nuisance and that they need to be either eradicated or humanely euthanised after being trapped (or just shot), you have to talk about proactive steps to stop more feral cats being created. 

That can only take place through education. It has to be widespread education, probably part of the general school curriculum if you really want to get to the bottom of the problem.

You have got to change attitudes, fundamental attitudes in a small section of society because it is only in a small section of society, perhaps around 5% of cat owners, who spoil it for everybody else by not spaying and neutering their cats to ensure that they don't procreate. And by limiting the number of cats that they possess. In short, showing some self-discipline and demonstrating to others that they care about cat welfare and are not self-indulgently simply acquiring cats willy-nilly without proper controls and management.

There are even some people - even today - who believe that a female cat needs to have babies before she can be complete which is pure mumbo-jumbo. If all the people who think that that their female cats need to have babies, you have a cat problem and some of those kittens will grow up to be adult cats that are unwanted and some of them will become feral cats.

The more you read about domestic and feral cats the more you have to conclude that the domestication of the Middle Eastern wildcat has been a failure. This is because half the world's population of "domestic cats" are actually feral cats. So, if there are 500 million domestic and feral cats in the world, there are at least 250 million feral cats and that might be a conservative number.  It was never meant to be this way, but humans have learned to reluctantly accept feral cats which means they accept a ton of misery in animals that were created out of negligence.

Although we do not know the number of domestic and feral cats in the world. We have to guess. But my guess is that there are more feral cats than domestic cats when looking at all the world's domestic and feral cats.

This is because in Asia and specifically in India the majority of cats are 'community cats'. They are semi-feral. They are not true domestic cats. They are sometimes fed but they are not taken the veterinarians when they become sick. There is little or no medical care. The level of care to community cats is average-to-poor to very poor.