It’s Caturday!

By Jeanette Smith

Well, it seems as if we might be back on track, after being sidetracked by disaster preparation and flea control, both great topics and timely.

If you remember, I said in my first column that it is my opinion that to properly maintain the population of cats in a community, several pieces of the puzzle need to be implemented simultaneously. These include

Management of feral cat colonies
Access to low-cost spaying/neutering and vaccination services
A reliable rescue organization that fosters and adopts
Temporary care for cats while owners are in hospital or otherwise unable to care for their cat
Public education

Today, I will try to cover, or at least start to cover, feral cat colonies. Personally, I prefer to call them neighbourhood cats or community cats. The word “feral” conjures images of hissing, spitting and fighting; most cats that are referred to as “feral” are simply cats that have fallen on hard times, or been born to such cats.

A colony starts when people “dump” kittens in the country, or move and abandon their cat at the old place. When a few start to gather in a place, they mate, have little ones and soon there is a whole bunch of cats around. Then someone starts putting food out for them, and the cats start fighting for territory. This is a terrible life for cats, and especially for the kittens born into this way of life.

The Chatham-Kent Cat Action Team has the above list, and a few others, in its mission statement, but decided to focus on colony management. The best way to manage a colony is to practice what is known as TNR, which means Trap, Neuter, and Release; it also includes spaying of females, medical treatment and vaccination, micro-chipping, “ear-tipping” and in most cases, the removal and adoption of any kittens and cats, after a period of socialization. Ears are tipped so that it is obvious just looking at it that a cat has been sterilized and is cared for, and saves the cat from being trapped again! By the beginning of spring, The CK-CAT had trapped and treated over 100 cats.

Trapping is usually done by the colony caretaker, the one that feeds the colony regularly. The benefits of TNR are many and include :

elimination of new kittens stabilizes the colony population;
greatly reduced aggressive and territorial behaviour and
reduction spraying and noise.

These all make it easier for humans to live with a colony, and the colony caretaker keeps an eye on the health of the cats in general. Cats that are fed regularly and sheltered are generally in better health and more able to fight off disease, and with the aggressive behaviour of the males reduced, the cuts and scrapes of fighting are also greatly reduced.

In Chatham-Kent, the CK-CAT will help colony caretakers to TNR a colony. There is a process that must be adhered to (part of the criteria for the grant that was awarded to the CK-CAT), and the first step is to contact Nancy Havens at the Municipality of Chatham-Kent, 519-360-1998 ext. 3211 or nancyh@chatham-kent.ca.

This is just a very basic overview of TNR. If you are interested in learning more, there are excellent resources on the internet, and I have listed a few below, or you can Google some for yourself. The most interesting community cat colony that I know of was at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and although it is now disbanded (the last few cats were “adopted” by some of the colony caretakers), they still have a Facebook page. It is very interesting to read, and there are lots of photographs too. Those cats had the most interesting shelters custom-built for them.

As usual, if you have any questions (or a subject that you would like to see covered), please do not hesitate to contact me, I will do my best to either answer your question or to start you off on a search to find your own answers.

RESOURCES

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Cats-of-Parliament-Hill/10150154879045652?hc_location=stream

http://torontostreetcats.com/