Feral Cats All Over the World
USA
Don't forget that October,16 is National Feral Cat Day in the United States!
Some adult feral cats can be socialized, depending on the degree of human interaction throughout their lives. Feral kittens must be socialized with humans in order to be adoptable, and it is best to remove them from their mother before 6 weeks of age in order to do so. This feral cat has had the tip of one ear severed, which identifies it as having been sterilized and inoculated by a Trap-Neuter-Return program.
Some adult feral cats can be socialized, depending on the degree of human interaction throughout their lives; feral kittens must be socialized with humans in order to be adoptable, and it is best to remove them from their mother before 6 weeks of age in order to do so. This feral cat has had the tip of one ear severed, which identifies it as having been sterilized and inoculated by a Trap-Neuter-Return program.
In the United States, there is an ongoing debate about how to deal with feral cat populations. There is little doubt that feral cats are extremely effective at controlling or even eradicating small animal populations, and some cite the utility of cats in controlling populations of verminous rodent species. That is one of the major justifications for the keeping of farm cats. However, conservationists argue that feral cats contribute greatly to the killing of songbirds and other endangered birds, with estimates that bird loss is at 100 million a year due to predation. However research into the causes of bird deaths has also found that transparent windows constitute the biggest threat that birds face. Additionally, it is argued that the resurgence of other small predators such as the gray fox (urocyon cinereoargenteus), fisher or pekan (martes pennanti), coyote (canis latrans), and bobcat (lynx rufus) is a contributing factor in conserved bird deaths.
Trap-Neuter-Return or TNR programs, presented as a humane method of feral cat population control, are facilitated by many volunteers and organizations in the States. These organizations trap and sterilize feral cats as well as provide inoculation against rabies and other viruses. Sometimes long-lasting flea treatments are also applied before release. Frequently, attending veterinarians notch the tip off one ear during spay/neuter surgery to mark the individual as spayed or neutered and inoculated, as these cats will more than likely find themselves trapped again. Volunteers often continue to feed and give care to these cats throughout their lives, unfortunately, it becomes very difficult to domesticate and adopt a feral cat unless it is trapped and socialized before six weeks of age.
Australia
It has been suggested that feral cats have been present in Australia since before European settlement, and may have arrived with Dutch shipwrecks in the 17th century. However historical records do not suggest this, instead dating the arrival of feral cats at around 1824. Intentional releases were made in the late 19th century to control mice, rabbits and rats. Cats had colonised their present range in Australia by 1890. Evidence for early predation by cats having caused major and widespread declines in native fauna is circumstantial and anecdotal and its credibility and significance is debated (Abbot 2002, Dickman 1996).
Feral cats in Australia prey on a variety of wildlife. In arid and semi-arid environments introduced European Rabbits and House Mice are the dominant part of the diet; in forests and urbanised areas native marsupial prey forms the larger part of the diet (based on 22 studies summarised in Dickman 1996). In arid environments where rabbits do not occur native rodents are taken. Birds form a smaller part of the diet, mostly in forests and urbanised areas, reptiles also form just a small part of the diet.
Numerous Australian environmentalists and conservationists claim that the feral cat has been an ecological disaster in Australia, inhabiting most ecosystems except dense rainforest, and being implicated in the extinction of several marsupial and placental mammal species (Robley et al 2004). Scientific evidence has been hard to come by to support this view and some researchers disagree with it (Abbot 2002). Sound evidence that feral cats exert a significant effect on native wildlife throughout the mainland is lacking (Dickman 1996; Jones 1989; Wilson et al. 1992). Difficulties in separating the effects of cats from that of foxes (also introduced) and environmental effects have hindered research into this. Cats have co-existed with all mammal species in Tasmania for nearly 200 years. Tasmania is fox free. The Western Shield program in Western Australia, involving broad-scale poisoning of foxes, has resulted in rapid recoveries of many species of native mammals in spite of the presence of feral cats throughout the baited area. However in 2005 a study was published which for the first time found proof of feral cats causing declines in native mammals (Risbey et al 2005); an experiment conducted in Heirisson Prong compared small mammal populations in areas cleared of both foxes and cats, of foxes only, and a control plot. Researchers found that mammal populations were lower in areas cleared of foxes only and in the control plots.
Cats may also play a further role in Australia's human altered ecosystems; with foxes they may be controlling introduced rabbits, particularly in arid areas, which themselves cause ecological damage (Robley et al 2004). Cats are not believed to have been a factor in the extinction of the only mainland bird species to be lost since European settlement, the Paradise Parrot; their role in the loss of rare species on Australasian islands, however, has been significant.
Australian Folklore has it that some feral cats in Australia have grown so large as to cause inexperienced observers to claim sightings of other species such as Puma etc. This folklore is however being shown to be more fact then fiction, with the recent shooting of an enormous Feline in the Gippsland area of Victoria_(Australia), subsequent DNA test showed the Feline to be Felus Catus. Subsequent news stories of large Feral Cats being sighted is almost monthly in Australia and the evidence is very good to suggest a breading population of these enormous Felines in the south-eastern states of Victoria(Australia) and New South Wales.
Control programs are difficult to devise due to the nocturnal and solitary nature of feral cats, broad distribution in the landscape and continuous additions to the population from abandoned domestic cats. Due to the danger posed to humans handling the animal, captured feral cats are almost always killed. Although trap neuter and return programs such as those in the United States are not prevalent in Australia, they are now being introduced in some urban and suburban areas such as Adelaide. More recently, such programs have been introduced in Sydney by the "World League for Protection of Animals".
The Cats of Canada's Parliament
For many years (tradition associates them with a British garrison of the 1850s), a feral cat colony has existed on Canada's Parliament Hill in Ottawa. In recent years, living structures have been built for them, and they are fed by a volunteer who is given a stipend by the House of Commons. Veterinary services are donated by doctors in the city, and most of the cats are sterilized. At any given time, about fifteen cats live in the colony. The present Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is a cat fan and takes feral kittens into his home to socialize them before they are put up for adoption in Ottawa's shelters. Visitors to his official residence can expect to be asked if they have room in their homes for a cat.
Rome
Rome, Italy is perhaps the place with most feral cats, the total number being estimated between 250,000 and 350,000, organized in about 2,000 colonies, some of them living in famous ancient places such as the Colosseum.