Do feral cats make good pets?

No, feral cats do not make good pets. But they can make good pets once domesticated. The amount of work needed to domesticate a feral cat depends on the cat and the person. A true adult feral cat is a wild animal and may be impossible to domesticate. Please note that I am using the word "pet" to mean an animal kept for companionship. The key part of this is the word "kept" meaning looked after full-time, almost always in the home.

However, some feral cats are semi-feral or strays. These cats will be easier to tame and domesticate. Kittens born to a feral cat mother can be tamed relatively easily if immediately socialized to the human environment.

There are some nice stories on PoC of feral cats being tamed. If not tamed, feral cats can make lovely companions at a distance. There are many charming relationships between human and feral cat where each respects the other and gives each other the space they require.

Associated selected pages. There are many more.

• My Feral Cats - by Bob Tucker (Helena, Ar). Please read this. It is a charming story.
• ADELE: A FERAL CAT STORY  - another really good story from Bob Tucker
• Yellow Cat - by Dorothy (Central Coast of California)

Are feral cats a problem?

The answer depends on your point of view and where you live. A lot of people see feral cats as a problem; usually a health problem. They say that feral cats spread disease and so on. Or the bird conservationists make exaggerated claims about how feral cats decimate bird populations. Some of these people have an axe to grind. They have a hidden agenda. Others are genuine. These people usually live in North America or Australia.

In the UK, feral cats are not seen as a problem and are often appreciated. We hardly see them. Throughout Europe the situation is probably similar.

In Asia there are lots of feral cats that would seem to be tolerated. In warmer climates feral cats are more visible and culled sometimes.

Feral cats have, in isolated cases, caused the loss of a high percentage of a single species of animal on small islands. 

There is a feral cat problem even if there is not a problem because a lot of people think there is a problem. This leads them to killing feral cats. Accordingly, for the feral cat, there is a problem - a big problem. An alternative view is that feral cats are beneficial but we don't know it.

It could be argued that we should be asking the question, "are people a problem?" People have created the feral cat problem.

Are feral cats considered wild animals?

The answer has to be a qualified, Yes. Feral cats are born to other feral cats. They are born in the wild or in a non-domestic environment (the human home). Their behavior is geared to living outside the human home and human interaction.

The complication comes when feral cats live in urban environments. Urban feral cats might feed on restaurant scraps and waste food from hospitals, for example. These cats may well meet with people. People may interact with them and feed them. These cats are semi-feral or semi-domesticated.

There is a gradation from true domestic to true feral cat. In between are stray cats and semi-feral cats to varying degrees of wildness.

Feral cats that can be called wild animals are those living, for example,  in the outback in Australia with large territories and which have an ecology and behavior that is in tune with a small wild cat species such as the African wildcat, which looks like a tabby feral cat in fact.

What wild cats are found in Georgia?

Officially, one species of wild cat is found in Georgia, USA and it is the bobcat. The bobcat is a medium sized wild cat. It is one of four wildcats under the Genus: lynx. The other three are the Canada lynx, the Eurasian lynx and the Iberian lynx.

The bobcat still has a wide distribution on the USA despite the expanding activities of people:


View Bobcat Geographic Range in a larger map

Female bobcat photographed by by goingslo on Flickr

Can a cougar kill a human?

Yes, a cougar can kill a human. But it is exceedingly rare for a cougar to attack a human and most often when it does happen the cougar attacks a child that is unsupervised. The cougar or mountain lion is not a small cat but neither is the cougar that big. The weight of the cougar varies between 55 and 176 pounds taking into account females and males. It is the 4th largest wildcat after the jaguar, lion and tiger.

It is a relatively shy and retiring wildcat. I write about the cougar attack on this page. The page includes ways to avoid an attack. There have been very few mountain lion attacks especially considering the fact that cougar and human occupy the same territory. In California there have been 14 attacks in 117 years and most led to injuries not death. On occasion cougars suffer from rabies that causes the attack. In which case it is not a malicious, unprovoked attack.

I am sure that there are many people (sport hunters?) who think differently. Too many cougars are shot needlessly through our unjustified fear.