Information about Feral Cat

Feral cats are the descendants of domesticated cats that were abandoned by their owners or that strayed into wild areas from their homes. When the domesticated cats mated, their offspring were never handled by or associated with humans, thus making their kittens feral. In Australia the term feral cat refers to cats living and breeding entirely in the wild. Significant populations of wildlife in Australia, including marsupials, reptiles, and birds, poorly adapted to this efficient predator, have allowed the establishment of stable populations across most of the country.

Adult feral cats, that were never socialized with humans, can rarely be socialized. Feral kittens can sometimes be socialized to live with humans. The ideal time for capture is between six and eight weeks old. Taming at this age may only take a couple of days. Older kittens can be tamed - but it takes longer. Also, an older kitten may only bond with the person working with them, which can make adoption difficult, but not impossible.

Feral cats may live alone but are usually found in large groups called feral colonies with communal nurseries, depending on resource availability. The average life span of a feral cat that survives beyond kittenhood is usually cited as being less than two years,^[1] while a domestic housecat lives an average of 12 to 16 years. However, feral cats aged 19 (Cat Action Trust) and 26 (Cats Protection) have been reported where food and shelter are available.

Cities and North America are not native environments for cats. The domestic cat comes from temperate or hot, dry climates and was distributed throughout the world by humans. Cats are extremely adaptable, and feral felines have been found in conditions of extreme cold and heat. They are more susceptible to cold, damp conditions than to cold alone. In addition, they are vulnerable to predators such as dogs and coyotes.

Major feral cat populations

United States

Some adult feral cats can be socialized, depending on the degree of human interaction throughout their lives; feral kittens must be socialized with humans in order to be adoptable, and it is best to remove them from their mother before six weeks of age in order to do so. In the United States, there is debate about how to deal with feral cat populations. Some suggest leveraging the proceeds from the widely successful Cancun Movie series, "Cats Gone Wild" to raise awareness.

There is little doubt that feral cats are extremely effective at controlling or even eradicating small animal populations, and some cite the utility of cats in controlling populations of verminous rodent species. This is one of the major justifications for the keeping of farm cats. However, conservationists argue that feral cats contribute greatly to the killing of songbirds and other endangered birds, with estimates that bird loss is at 100 million a year due to predation. However, research into the causes of bird deaths has also found that reflective windows constitute the biggest threat that birds face [1]. Additionally, it is argued that the resurgence of other small predators such as the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), fisher or pekan (Martes pennanti), coyote (Canis latrans), and bobcat (Lynx rufus) is a contributing factor in conserved bird deaths.

Some advocate culling feral cat populations by hunting, arguing that it is the most cost-effective method of population control. However, a proposal in the U.S. state of Wisconsin to legalize the hunting of feral cats in an attempt to reduce their population (April 2005) was blocked by the state's lawmakers. South Dakota and Minnesota allow wild cats to be shot. The U.S. spends over $50 million a year to shelter some of these cats.

Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programs, presented as a humane method of feral cat population control, are facilitated by many volunteers and organizations in the United States. These organizations trap feral cats, sterilize them through neutering, and provide inoculation against rabies and other viruses and sometimes long-lasting flea treatments before releasing them. Frequently, attending veterinarians notch the tip off one ear during spay/neuter surgery to mark the individual as being previously caught. Volunteers often continue to feed and give care to these cats throughout their lives. Many animal care experts believe that it prohibitively difficult if not often impossible to domesticate and adopt a feral cat unless it is trapped and socialized before six weeks of age. However there is some evidence that many people have adopted and domesticated adult feral cats successfully. Also, some feral cat organizations offer techniques to do this.^[2]

October 16 is National Feral Cat Day in the United States.^[3]

Australia

It has been suggested that feral cats have been present in Australia since before European settlement, and may have arrived with Dutch shipwrecks in the 17th century, or even prior to that; arriving from present-day Indonesia with Macassan fisherman and trepangers who frequented Australia's shores. However historical records do not suggest this, instead dating the arrival of feral cats at around 1824.^[4] Intentional releases were made in the late 19th century to control mice, rabbits and rats. Cats had colonised their present range in Australia by 1890. Evidence for early predation by cats having caused major and widespread declines in native fauna is circumstantial and anecdotal and its credibility and significance is debated (Abbot 2002, Dickman 1996).

Feral cats in Australia prey on a variety of wildlife. In arid and semi-arid environments introduced European rabbits and house mice are the dominant part of the diet; in forests and urbanised areas native marsupial prey forms the larger part of the diet (based on 22 studies summarised in Dickman 1996). In arid environments where rabbits do not occur native rodents are taken. Birds form a smaller part of the diet, mostly in forests and urbanised areas, reptiles also form just a small part of the diet.

Numerous Australian environmentalists and conservationists claim that the feral cat has been an ecological disaster in Australia, inhabiting most ecosystems except dense rainforest, and being implicated in the extinction of several marsupial and placental mammal species (Robley et al 2004). Scientific evidence has been hard to come by to support this view and some researchers disagree with it (Abbot 2002). Sound evidence that feral cats exert a significant effect on native wildlife throughout the mainland is lacking (Dickman 1996; Jones 1989; Wilson et al. 1992). Difficulties in separating the effects of cats from that of foxes (also introduced) and environmental effects have hindered research into this. Cats have co-existed with all mammal species in Tasmania for nearly 200 years. Tasmania is fox free.<ref name="Abbot" /> The Western Shield program in Western Australia, involving broad-scale poisoning of foxes, has resulted in rapid recoveries of many species of native mammals in spite of the presence of feral cats throughout the baited area.<ref name="Abbot" /> However in 2005 a study was published which for the first time found proof of feral cats causing declines in native mammals (Risbey et al 2005). an experiment conducted in Heirisson Prong compared small mammal populations in areas cleared of both foxes and cats, of foxes only, and a control plot. Researchers found that mammal populations were lower in areas cleared of foxes only and in the control plots.

Cats may also play a further role in Australia's human altered ecosystems; with foxes they may be controlling introduced rabbits, particularly in arid areas, which themselves cause ecological damage (Robley et al 2004). Cats are not believed to have been a factor in the extinction of the only mainland bird species to be lost since European settlement, the Paradise Parrot; their role in the loss of rare species on Australasian islands, however, has been significant.

Australian Folklore holds that some feral cats in Australia have grown so large as to cause inexperienced observers to claim sightings of other species such as Puma etc. This folklore is however being shown to be more fact than fiction, with the recent shooting of an enormous Feline in the Gippsland area of Victoria, subsequent DNA test showed the feline to be Felis silvestris catus.^[5] Subsequent news stories of large Feral Cats being sighted is almost monthly in Australia and the evidence is very good to suggest a breeding population of these enormous Felines in the south-eastern states of Victoria and New South Wales.^[6]

Control programs are difficult to devise due to the nocturnal and solitary nature of feral cats, broad distribution in the landscape and continuous additions to the population from abandoned domestic cats. Due to the danger posed to humans handling the animal, captured feral cats are almost always killed. Although trap neuter and return programs such as those in the United States are not prevalent in Australia, they are now being introduced in some urban and suburban areas such as Adelaide. More recently, such programs have been introduced in Sydney by the "World League for Protection of Animals".

Rome

Rome, Italy is perhaps the city with the largest feral cat population in the world; its population has been estimated to be between 250,000 and 350,000, organized in about 2,000 colonies, some of them living in famous ancient places such as the Colosseum.[2] Some historians believe, Romans' affection for cats dates from the Roman Empire's conquest of Egypt, where royalty kept cats. Others believe that Rome was spared from devastating outbreaks of the bubonic plague by the city's feral cat population, which kept Rome's rat population low thus reducing key plague carrying vector. Whatever the case, Rome's affection for stray felines remains strong.

Canada's Parliament

Main article: Canadian Parliamentary Cats

For many years (tradition associates them with a British garrison of the 1850s), a feral cat colony has existed on Canada's Parliament Hill in Ottawa. In recent years, living structures have been built for them, and they are fed by a volunteer who is given a stipend by the House of Commons. Veterinary services are donated by doctors in the city, and most of the cats are sterilized. At any given time, about fifteen cats live in the colony. The present Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is a cat fan and takes feral kittens into his home to socialize them before they are put up for adoption in Ottawa's shelters. Visitors to his official residence can expect to be asked if they have room in their homes for a cat.

Feral cats and island restoration

Feral cats introduced to islands with ecologically naive fauna, that is species that have not evolved or have lost predator responses for dealing with cats (Moors & Atkinson 1984), have had a devastating impact on these islands' biodiversity. They have been implicated in the extinction of several species and local extinctions, such as the huitas from the Caribbean and the Guadalupe Storm-petrel from Pacific Mexico. Moors and Atkinson wrote, in 1984, "No other alien predator has had such a universally damaging effect." Given the damage they cause, many conservationists working in the field of island restoration (literally restoring damaged islands through removal of introduced species and replanting and reintroducing native species) have worked to remove feral cats. As of 2004, 48 islands have had their feral cat populations removed, including New Zealand's network of offshore island bird reserves (Nogales et al, 2004), and Australia's Macquarie Island. Larger projects have also been undertaken, including their complete removal from Ascension Island. The cats, introduced in the 19th century, caused a collapse in populations of nesting seabirds. The project to remove them from the island began in 2002, and the island was cleared of cats by 2004. Since then seven species of seabird which had not nested on the island for a hundred years have returned.[3]. In other instances the removal of cats has had unintended concequences, such as on Macquarie Island where the removal of cats caused an explosion in the number of rabbits and rats which have also harmed native seabirds (the removal of rats and rabbits is scheduled for 2007).

Feral cats, along with rabbits, some sea birds and sheep, form the entire large animal population of the remote Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean.

Activism

Feral cat colonies often arise from stray or abandoned unsterilized cats. The cats breed rapidly and have multiple-kit litters, although relatively few kittens survive to breeding age.

The conditions lived in by feral cats vary immensely. Some live short, dangerous, unhealthy, desperate lives, in deplorable conditions. Others are welcomed as working cats around factories and farms, and while their lives are not luxurious, some live over 10 years. Cat Action Trust has encountered ferals up to 19 years old; the record age for a feral is 26. Because of the perceived dangers to humans, other species, and the cats themselves, and out of compassion toward the animals, many people, including celebrities such as Bob Barker, campaign to encourage people to spay and neuter their pets and support the humane control of feral cats.

A growing number of animal societies realize that feral cats are wild animals and should not be judged by pet animal standards. Where the cats perform a useful task or are not a threat to the local ecology, the approach is to trap, neuter and return them to their own habitat, while removing any ill, injured or tameable individuals.

However, recent studies published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association indicate that trap-neuter-release programs are not effective in reducing feral cat populations. These programs cannot be effective unless they manage cats on a population--rather than colony--basis, neuter at least 75% of the cats in the population, and carrying capacity is reduced, usually by reducing the amount of food provided to the cats by humans.

In Popular Culture

• Top Cat is a famous cartoon feral cat.
• Feral cats are the main characters of the fantasy novel series Warriors. The colonies are called 'Clans'.

Footnotes

Further reading

• Tabor, Roger, Arrow Books (1983). The Wild Life of the Domestic Cat. ISBN 0-09-931210-7
• Moors, P.J.; Atkinson, I.A.E. (1984). "Predation on seabirds by introduced animals, and factors affecting its severity.". In Status and Conservation of the World's Seabirds. Cambridge: ICBP. ISBN 0-946888-03-5.
• Nogales, Manuel et al (2004). "A review of feral cat eradication on islands". Conservation Biology. 18(2): 310-319. http://www.issg.org/database/species/reference_files/felcat/Nogales%20et%20al.%202004.pdf
• Risbey, Danielle A. ; Calver, Michael C. ; Short, Jeff ; Bradley J. Stuart and Ian W. Wright (2005) The impact of cats and foxes on the small vertebrate fauna of Heirisson Prong, Western Australia. II. A field experiment " Wildlife Research 27(3): 223-235 abstract
• Robley, A., Reddiex, B., Arthur T., Pech R., and Forsyth, D., (2004). "Interactions between feral cats, foxes, native carnivores, and rabbits in Australia". Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Sustainability and Environment, Melbourne.
• Abbot, I. (2002) "Origin and spread of the cat, Felis catus, on mainland Australia, with a discussion of the magnitude of its early impact on native fauna" Wildlife Research 29(1): 51-74 abstract
• Dickman, C. (1996) "Overview of the Impact of Feral Cats on Australian Fauna" Australian Nature Conservation Agency ISBN 0-642-21379-8 whole text

External links

• Original Cat Action Trust
• Feral cats (BBC)
• Animals Australia: Feral Cat bibliography
• Feral cats (The Wildlife Society)
• http://members.aol.com/catsferal/pubs.html (Feral cats in Portsmouth Naval Yard)