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Like Peter Marra, “I’m an advocate for animals, including cats. I want what’s best for them. And the best thing for cats is to be inside” – whether they like it or not. I want there to be a world in which there are no homeless cats hunting birds or other wildlife. But in the meantime, it is grossly unfair to blame animal activists for the presence of homeless cats. It is a problem caused by careless, thoughtless people over many years. Unfortunately at present there are not indoor homes or shelters available for all the cats presently trying to survive outdoors. Many of these cats were abandoned when people decided they didn’t want them any longer. Many others were dumped as entire litters of “oops” kittens conceived when their unspayed mothers escaped or were allowed outdoors during estrus. I have personally trapped, spayed/castrated hundreds of homeless cats, returning them to site when it was welcoming habitat with a caregiver, but never releasing them into sensitive wildlife habitat. Still, I was sadly aware that there would be some degree of wildlife depredation, though estimates by birder conservancies are wildly exaggerated, ranging from one billion to possibly more than four billion per year just in the U.S. The range is too wide, and as admitted by Peter Marra, “nobody knows how many cats are out there.” If you don’t know how many cats are out there, there is no way to reasonably estimate the number of wildlife kills by cats. It is my observation over many decades that only about one in ten cats are highly skilled as avian predators capable of catching healthy and uninjured birds; most cats are oriented towards the ground, hunting for small rodents. Peter Marra engages in scaremongering when he suggests toxoplasmosis causes schizophrenia or when he repeats the completely unsubstantiated claim that “toxoplasmosis will someday take a larger toll on human health than malaria.” While toxoplasmosis is the cause of some wildlife fatalities, most cases of human toxoplasmosis are the result of handling or eating undercooked meat. Another mystery is where Marra gets the figure of eight years as the period of time in which a cat who has been trapped, neutered, and released will live in the environment before dying. Most cats living unsupervised outdoors will be lucky to live half that number of years, and much of the difference in cat longevity post TNR is related to the age of the cats when they underwent TNR. The goal of TNR programs is supposed to be to zero out the populations as quickly as possible, though it is true that most projects are under-funded and some are poorly managed. It should always be a priority to relocate feral cat colonies away from areas with endangered or threatened species of animals who could fall prey to cats. But cats do play a positive environmental role is helping to control excess numbers of rodents who would otherwise be trapped or poisoned, and so there are many habitats (such as barns or warehouses) suitable for the release of feral cats. I do not oppose euthanasia (meaning painless death and not agony delivered by poison or weapon) when there is no other option whereby animals can be given decent lives, but making decisions about homeless animals should be made on a case by case basis, in the spirit of compassionate conservation.
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When Cats Attack | Sierra Club