It was a fairly good year for village cat-wranglers this year, according to Marie Post, town/village animal control officer and the person in charge of the village’s feral cat cleanup program, now shut down for the winter.
For the last several years, spurred on by complaints from village residents about yowling, howling, nasty, flea-ridden feral cats roaming the neighborhoods and making it unsafe for pet cats to go outside, the village has had a catch-and-release program for the feral cats.
Using live trapping, volunteers and some village officials trap these cats and transport them to the Ulster County SPCA in the town of Ulster, where they are either spayed or neutered, and then released back into the wild.
There have been more than 20 cats caught and released this year, said Post, “a successful year.”
Thanks to the village’s program, the cats will continue to live out their lives in their cat colony but will be unable to reproduce, which, village officials hope, will put an end to the feral cat problem.
No one really has a good handle on how many feral cat colonies there are in the village, but the one that was targeted this year was in a vacant lot off Montross Street.
Earlier this year, village trustee Patrick Landewe said it was believed the original colony members were discarded by owners who no longer wanted to care for the animals, and that they then did what comes naturally and a feral cat colony sprang up.
Residents, especially those that have had to deal with the problem cats, have asked why the cats are not just euthanized. Post and trustees have said they do not believe in killing the cats, but support the more humane method of ridding the village of its cat colonies.
It costs $20 to spay or neuter each captured cat, the cost of which comes from donations, a line item in the village budget, or from an animal emergency fund.
The town of Saugerties has had a similar program for the last five years, and it has worked there, Post explained.
Once the weather turns warmer and winter turns into spring, the village will be looking for volunteers to help with the cat roundup. For more information, call Post at 246-6211 or the village hall at 246-2321.
We can only hope and pray that everyone doesn’t start raising Black Mamba snakes for pets and then you round them up and put them back outside to destroy all your native wildlife and yourselves.
But then again, I guess when you have voted officials this incredibly stupid and foolish into office, they are only reflecting the mentality and wisdom of their residents. You got exactly what you deserved.
Be cautious about suggesting that any cats rounded-up from outdoors be used for adoption or you could be held criminally responsible. There’s no way to know their vaccination history, if any, nor their exposure to all the deadly diseases cats carry. If a cat has contracted rabies then a vaccination against it later will do no good. It’s already too late. There’s also no reliable known test for rabies while keeping the animal alive. They really need to be destroyed after they are trapped. It’s the only sane and sensible solution. This is precisely why all wild-harvested animals in the world, of any type intended for the pet-industry, must undergo an extended quarantine period of up to 6 months before transfer or sale of those animals to prevent just these things. Cats are no different than any other animal when harvested from the wild. You’re just risking this following story happening in every shelter across the land.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/09/23/2631106/rabid-cat-adopted-from-wake-county.html
Adopting any cat that’s been taken from outdoors is just playing Russian Roulette.
I found some surprising things about all the diseases these invasive-species vermin are now spreading throughout the USA.
These are just the diseases cats spread to humans, not counting the ones they spread to all wildlife and even other cat species. They include: Campylobacter Infection, Cat Scratch Disease, Coxiella burnetti Infection (Q fever), Cryptosporidium Infection, Dipylidium Infection (tapeworm), Hookworm Infection, Leptospira Infection, Plague, Rabies, Ringworm, Salmonella Infection, Toxocara Infection, Toxoplasma. [Centers for Disease Control, July 2010] Flea-borne Typhus and Tularemia can now also be added to that list.