Feral cats: they yowl, they howl, they create problems for homeowners, they mug harmless neighborhood cats. For most residents, they’re a nuisance, and they seem to be growing more numerous. That’s why the village has launched a spay and neuter campaign which village trustees are already hailing as a success.
“The village is taking a more active role to take care of the feral cat problem,” said Trustee Patrick Landewe.
One part of the village was singled out as ground zero for the cat colony: a vacant lot off Montross Street.
“This summer we are targeting this one colony. The sense that I have is that at one time, people dumped the cats there and since it is an under-utilized property and it’s overgrown, it’s a great place to hide out,” Landewe said.
A worker at Stella’s Station on Partition Street, which is adjacent to the vacant lot, said the feral cats “are always out by the dumpster.”
But not everyone in that neighbor sees the feral cats as a problem, Landewe added, and they put out food for the animals.
The program is being administered by volunteers and village officials. It uses live-catch Havahart traps. Village officials, and volunteers (but mostly trustee Don Hackett) take the animals to the Ulster County SPCA where they’re spayed or neutered, given a rabies shot and released back into the colony, explained Marie Post, who as town of Saugerties animal control officer and the person who runs the Saugerties Animal Shelter oversees the program.
So far, according to Landewe, four out of nine adult feral adult cats living in the colony have been caught, fixed, and released back into the colony again. However, before all the adults have been caught and their ability to procreate curtailed, they had litters and there are now a number of kittens that have expanded the colony population, Landewe said.
This is not the first time the board has attempted to address the village’s feral cat problem. Two years ago, the village board introduced an animal control law that would have required cat owners to have their pets tagged with a computer chip, or made to wear a collar in order to control the number of animals roaming free, or face a fine of up to $250.
Intense opposition to the proposed law by cat owners forced the board to retreat and seek out other ways to help control the burgeoning feral cat population.
This is when Post got involved, Landewe explained. “She came to us and said that if we put up $500, she would match it from money she had in her budget to help take care of the problem.”
“For $20 an animal, the county SPCA will spay and neuter the animal and give it a rabies shot,” Post said.
A similar program was begun about five years ago in the town, Post said, and “it’s been a success.”
While some people wonder why the feral cats are not just euthanized, Post said she does not believe in it and feels it is better to release it back into the colony where it can live out its life.
And while this year the village board allocated $500 in its budget to pay for the program, there is also the Animal Emergency Fund Inc., to which donations can be made, Post said.
“It’s just a tiny outfit, and all the money goes to the village program,” she said.
To make a donation, just call the village clerk’s office at 246-2321, or Post at 679-0339 or 246-6211.
Post also lends out the Havahart traps to residents who want to catch feral cats at no cost. Just give her a call and ask her about the program.
I think this town does not make public health and welfare the priority. Cats need to be removed – not put back.
http://joomla.wildlife.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=845&Itemid=183
I have nothing against cats (I own one myself) but I think there are quite simply too many of them in the wild. They greatly reduce the songbird and rabbit populations. Euthanization is painless and it’s even better for THEM than for them to live outside during the brutal winters.
Trapping and/or sterilizing and testing as a solution is a failed concept from Day-One.
There are now about 150,000,000 INVASIVE-SPECIES feral-cats just in the USA, PLUS 86,000,000 pet-cats (60,000,000 of which are still allowed to kill all wildlife), this means the population is already oversaturated for a long time. Nobody wants more than 86,000,000 cats for pets. There’s only 311,000,000 people in the USA. 2+ cats exist for every 3 people, from infant to senior. Thanks to those who outlawed destroying them in a more efficient, often more-humane, and more cost-effective manner by shooting them. While they also promoted their slow, random-chance, inefficient, and failed trapping programs. TNR people (criminally animal-abusive and irresponsible cat-hoarders in reality) will claim trap and kill is also a failure, and they’d be right. The problem has always been the trapping, slowing things down far below cats’ breeding-rates.
Keep in mind their exponential growth-rate. An average litter of 5 cats every 5-6 months (some say 3X’s a year), breeding as early as 6-months of age. 2 can become 42 (up to 252) cats in only 1 year. No amount of trapping them (if you could even get them all to enter traps), nor valuable resources (transport and vet costs, etc.), man-hours, nor money will ever catch-up to their growth rate. You have an ecological, human-health, animal-welfare, and financial disaster on your hands, ALL thanks to cat-lovers and TNR-advocates. The faster that cats are destroyed the better. Even using guns and having all stray and feral cats shot-on-sight we still might not be able to catch-up to their exponential growth. Not even until every last land animal (including humans) is gone from this earth, due to cats destroying the whole food-chain, with nothing but cannibalistic cats left walking the land. No exaggeration. Do the math. Ask any TNR group how many cats they’ve trapped. They haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of the problem THEY CAUSED and are only exacerbating with their blatant lies and deceptions. Using the birth-rate [of (N/2) X 5)] every 6 months, guess how many feral-cats alone will be born just this year? 375,000,000 (1st gen) + 937,500,000 (2nd gen) = 1,312,500,000. This is of course if they only breed 2X a year and not 3X a year. Add in the original breeding population and you have 150,000,000 + 1,312,500,000 = 1,462,500,000. Yes, nearly 1.5 BILLION cats. Got enough traps? Got enough centuries to trap them all while they’re still breeding at exponential rates and still annihilating all wildlife? Trap-advocates cost you to lose the feral-cat-explosion race LONG ago.
On advice of the sheriff, I alone was able to completely rid my land of ALL these INVASIVE-SPECIES feral-cats by shooting. Cats had annihilated the native food-chain for ALL native wildlife, destroying not only all the prey that their cats disemboweled and cruelly tortured for play-toys, but all the predators that depended on that prey, starving all native predators to death as well. (Now there’s REAL animal cruelty for you, caused by cat-lovers. They should all be in prisons for life.) Shooting cats is perfectly legal where I live, and is even a more humane method when done right than terrorizing trapping and animal-shelter methods. One moment they are happily stalking defenseless animals to cruelly torture again, the next they are dead and don’t even know what happened. Making your land 100% cat-free is something that cat advocates haven’t been able to solve nation-wide for 30-40 years. On my land only 1 person in only 2 seasons was able to accomplish what they couldn’t attain in decades. Why is that? It’s also been over a year since, guess how many replaced them. NONE. Another flat-out TNR LIE, their “vacuum effect”. What replaced them is all the wildlife THAT *WAS* HERE AND BELONGED HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. It’s time for you all to grow a spine and get enough strength-of-heart to do what needs to be done. If it’s not legal where you live then use the “SSS Cat Management Program”, for Shoot, Shovel, and Shut-Up. That’s legal everywhere in the world. It may be the only thing that saves us from this ecological disaster caused by spineless and ignorant lawmakers, as well as all the heartless and disrespectful cat-advocates that they defend. Don’t waste your time arguing with ignorant cat-lovers either, as I stupidly tried to do for 15 years. Just do what needs to be done FIRST. Only later, after you’ve made your land 100% cat-free should you take your time to try to educate the ineducable, as I am attempting to do now.
The Feral-Cat Solution:
Make new cat-ownership AND care-taking of feral-cats a felony, with fines and prison for anyone failing to comply until this ecological-disaster they created is brought under control by any and all means possible. Shoot-on-sight is without a doubt, the fastest, most humane, most economical (0.3 cent to 5 cents, a ONE TIME expense per cat, depending on ammo prices), and most effective method available. It’s how I was able to LEGALLY rid my own land 100% of this invasive-species nightmare. (NONE have returned, the TNR-advocates’ “vacuum effect” is a bald-faced lie. Native wildlife THAT BELONGED HERE replaced them.) This is the only method that doesn’t endanger nor harass any other animals, as frequently happens with non-discriminatory random-chance traps, and is also the ONLY method faster than cats can out-breed and adapt to. (Cats that learned to evade traps are the next generations to try to destroy.) If it’s not legal where you live then use the “SSS Cat Management Program” — SSS = Shoot, Shovel, & Shut-Up. Avoid use of poisons if at all possible, that once entered into the food-chain, will go on to destroy more of the very wildlife that you are hoping to save from destruction by cats. Whatever you do, please bury or incinerate the carcasses so all the deadly diseases that cats now carry won’t go on to further infect the native wildlife, nor any other humans that might come in contact with them. (Which now even includes the plague, Google that fun fact. Cats also pass their Toxoplasma gondii brain-altering parasites to your livestock through their cats’ feces, which is how it gets into the food-chain and people contract it from eating undercooked meats.)
Following is some good documentation on the most humane ways to confront a feral-cat problem where you live, including the best firearms, air-rifles, and ammo required. Though avoid using their suggested slow and inefficient trapping methods that got us into the disaster that we have now. http://deenawinter.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/ec1781.pdf
Here’s a Fun-Fact that trap-advocates fail to realize, in their infinite ignorance of animal-behavior and evolution.
Those cats that have learned to evade all trapping methods are the next generations to survive. Ever hear the old adage, “If you invent a better mousetrap nature will just invent a better mouse.”?
Now, thanks to the supreme stupidity and ignorance of trap-advocates, we have a race of freely roaming cats in all countrysides of every continent which are passing on their “how to survive” behavior to all their offspring, both genetically and behaviorally. The next phase of millions of feral-cats won’t even be able to be trapped. This is just how amazingly stupid trap-advocates are. You thought 150,000,000 feral cats (present USA est.) was bad? In colloquial terms, “You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!”
There’s a reason the phrase “hunted to extinction” is so well-known in all cultures across all lands. It is the *ONLY* method that is faster than a species can breed and adapt to.
Sounds like killing is very effective… how is this to be done in a city? ? Do you propose we shoot them? What kind of guns do you recommend? Can this be done on selected, appropriate lots rather than shooting at them from at any place they happen to be? What did you use?
Police have no problems shooting humans in densely populated cities with very high-powered guns. Just use the same precautions they use when shooting cats with .22s and air-rifles in urban areas. If you can’t get a clean shot then don’t do it. I use the same method here because I don’t think a cat is even worth wasting one bullet on it,
Put a $5 bounty on each cat and let your gangs go to work. They already have guns, just redirect their energies where they’ll do some good. They’ll also have no problems entering buildings and areas where feral-cats are more likely to hide out.
Check into that publication link above for the best firearms and ammo to use.
However if using an air-rifle then I’d suggest going for an instantly fatal chest-shot instead of a head-shot. The slower projectile speed might just bounce off a cat’s hard skull. I would highly recommend that you also outfit your firearm with a good illuminated-reticle zoom-scope with a large aperture for use in dusk to dawn conditions when feral-cats are the most active. And to also outfit your gun with a laser-sight for precision aiming. A laser-sight will allow you to aim precisely even in the dead of night when you can’t even see your target through the scope. You’ll usually only get one shot each when ridding your land of cats with a firearm, make it count. (By using a laser-sight and good scope I’ve not wasted even ONE bullet yet.) If you miss that cat may never return and it’ll just go off spreading more diseases, torturing and killing more wildlife, and breeding out of control somewhere else. These accessories will also ensure that the animal dies a swift and painless humane-death.
btw: I just used a nice .22 with the least expensive but most dependable ammo I could find. I got a lot of 5000 rounds for only $15 on close-out sale of .22 longs. Got rid of 3 cats per penny this way. It doesn’t get cheaper than that!
Here’s a fun read to show just how TRULY effective TNR programs are.
Let us take the example of Ally Cat Allies’ astounding work in NYC, for example. Shall we? They always like to use that as such a HUGE example of TNR success. From their own words:
“In NYC there are currently 465 registered TNR colonies. When TNR began in these colonies, 6047 cats were present – today, there are 4523 cats present, a decline of approximately 25 percent.”
WHAT AN AMAZING SUCCESS STORY! … Right?
Of those 6,047 cats they managed to trap since 1999 and force through painful surgeries in the last 12 years, they’ve only REDUCED the total population by 1,524 cats, about 127 CATS PER YEAR. (1,524 cats that they CRUELLY TORTURED TO DEATH in reality. Because they all died of what TNR advocates “so lovingly” call ATTRITION. Death by disease, attacks, exposure, road-kill, poisoning, starvation, etc.) However, that’s only 0.4% of the 373,000 within the city’s limits. Yes, TNR groups are making such a HUGE dent in the problem aren’t they. Now, figure in that half of those 373,000 equals 186,500 reproductive female cats. They will EACH have an average litter of 5, anywhere from 2-3 times a year, breeding as early as 5-6 months of age, some breeding before they are even done nursing.
Guess how many cats have been born IN JUST THE LAST 6 MONTHS (hoping like hell that they’re not breeding every 4 months) while TNR-idiots reduced cats by their ASTOUNDING AMOUNT of 1,524 cats. Let’s do the math, shall we?
186,000 X 5 = 932,500 BRAND NEW CATS. Yes, you read that right, NINE HUNDRED AND THIRTY TWO *THOUSAND*, FIVE HUNDRED new cats. Almost ONE MILLION NEW CATS were born in just the last 6 months. Which now lowers the number of them that have been reduced by TNR idiots to only 0.16% of them. YOU ARE GOING BACKWARD YOU IDIOTS!
IS ANY OF THIS GETTING THROUGH THOSE TOXO-PARASITIZED DAMAGED BRAINS OF YOURS?
Guess how many will be born in another 6 months? (932,500 / 2) X 5 = 2,331,250 — TWO MILLION, THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE THOUSAND, TWO-HUNDRED AND FIFTY MORE CATS.
Keeping in mind that the first 186,500 female cats are all still alive and still breeding too. For another additional 932,500 cats again. Add in the pre-existing 373,000 cat-disaster, bringing the grand total in just ONE YEAR to 3,636,750 CATS. NEARLY FOUR MILLION. Which now means that TNR groups have only trapped and reduced the cat-population by 0.04% of them. That’s not even ONE-HALF of ONE-TENTH of ONE-PERCENT.
373,000 cats become nearly FOUR MILLION CATS … IN JUST *ONE* YEAR. Keeping in mind too, that these are the numbers in JUST ONE CITY in the USA.
Catching on yet?
NO??
And THIS is why we now have over 150,000,000 INVASIVE-SPECIES feral-cats across the USA destroying all native-wildlife and spreading dangerous diseases everywhere they step foot, due to the most amazingly absurd and terminally stupid people on earth promoting their TNR BULL.