Here Kitty!: Impacts of Feral Cats

Cats have become widely adored by popular culture with the help of websites such as icanhascheezburger.com which promotes the “aww” factor of cats by matching poor grammar with cute pictures. While these household pets seem extremely passive with their “meh” attitude while sunbathing on the couch, they are quickly becoming infamous for slaying more than just hearts. It is starting to become widely known that cats are one of the main killers of song birds and are having a growing impact on their population. Beyond the avian taxa, cats are bringing down the populations of rodents as well. They are known for snacking on endangered species such as the woodrat in wildlife refuges. They don’t just impact prey species either. They are major vectors of disease that can easily spread to humans including rabies, hookworm and toxoplasmosis which can cause miscarriages. Many people have contracted these diseases either from their outdoor cats or the feral cats living outside their houses.
My problem with feral cats is beyond the detriment that they cause to the environment, it how people react to them. I understand that many people view feral cats as their pets. While researchers and wildlife biologists can see the need for a reduction in the population, many cat people are putting out food to “help” their furry friends. Not only does this promote the growth of the population but it congregates the population, making them more prone to spread diseases between each other and to humans. So how do cat the cat people decide to fix this problem? Trap, neuter, release. In this reality taxpayers end up paying up to $100 for each cat as they must be trapped, have surgery and recover before being put back into the wild where they continue to eat the wildlife. This seems like a decent idea right? If the cats can’t reproduce their population won’t be able to continue to grow, right? To become a plausible solution over 60% of the needs to be neutered, making this solution expensive, time consuming, and improbable. The problem becomes that many cat organizations are very organized and very dedicated. They have convinced many cities to subscribe to the TNR method despite example after example of failure.
To me, its impossible to say “aww” when I see a cat lurking on the side of the road, wing and foot sticking out of the side of its mouth. It’s hard for me to see why many cats owners don’t understand how fluffy can be a voracious predator when she continues to place dead mice on their pillow night after night. It is nonsensical to feed the cats outside when it would take only a one bad encounter with one cat to contact numerous diseases. In the end, I would vastly prefer to see a nice warbler or bunting outside my house then a cat. I would much prefer to see a red - tailed hawk hunting on the side of the road then a feline.
More information at :
http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/06/cats-tnr-birds-feral