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Feral cats need your help, not a home

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Winter shows no sign of going away, and that means many concerned citizens are bringing in stray cats to the shelter, worried that they’re not going to survive outdoors. Many of these cats, however, are not strays, they are feral. The difference between the two comes down to socialization. A stray cat is one that previously lived in a home, had human contact, and depended on people. A feral cat, on the other hand, has had little to no human contact and survives outdoors on its own.

Although stray cats can become feral over time, the average feral cat we see at the shelter is one that was born outdoors and has never known life as a pet. Even if you are able to trap a feral cat, it is unlikely to ever transform into a house cat. Because of this, feral cats are considered unadoptable and trapping them to bring them to a shelter is often discouraged. Feral cats can lead long, healthy lives in the outdoors, and there are a couple of things you can do to help them.

Food and Water

While it’s important to have clean water available year round, food should not sit outside for feral cats 24/7. Remember that a food dish left outside at all times can also attract other animals, so offer food to the feral cats for a short period of time and then remove whatever food they don’t eat. Lifting food bowls off the ground will also help prevent insects from getting into the dishes. Keeping food and water dishes in a covered area is also preferable as it protects them from the elements. In New England, we have to consider the extreme cold during the winter months. A heated water bowl is a must in order to prevent it from freezing solid. If you’re looking for food for your feral cats, many shelters offer a food bank program. Supply stores may also donate torn bags of food that they are unable to sell.

Spay / Neuter Programs

The only way to stop a couple of feral cats from multiplying into one hundred feral cats is to have them fixed. Organizations that offer trap and release programs will humanely trap the feral cats, have them neutered, vaccinate them, and release them back into their colonies. Not only will cats that are fixed stop breeding and creating more feral cats, they will also lead healthier lives. If you are caring for feral cats, contact your local animal shelter to learn more about trap and release programs in your area.

Shelter

Providing a warm shelter for feral cats can be as simple as altering a large, plastic bin or as elaborate as building a wooden structure. No matter what route you decide to take, remember that, first and foremost, the shelter should offer protection from the elements. Make sure to cut a hole large enough in the structure for cats to get in and out. Straw on the floor of the shelter will give the feral cats warm bedding. Avoid using hay, blankets, or anything that might retain moisture.

If you are caring for feral cats, Ally Cat Allies offers a great deal of resources, including extensive information about building and buying shelters, on their website at www.alleycat.org. Additionally, your local animal shelter can direct you to organizations in your area that specialize in feral cats. Remember - while many stray cats might be thrilled to return to home environment, feral cats are already happy where they are!

Alaina Goodnough is the Promotions Coordinator at Cocheco Valley Humane Society in Dover, NH. She lives in Sanford, ME with three parrots, two cats, and two dachshunds. She can be reached at CVHS at devassist@cvhsonline.org

 

 

 

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March 03, 2014 at 10:48am
Be sure you test those cats for ALL of the following diseases, or I hope the recipient of one of them that is adopted-out or someone coming in contact with their disease-infested cats sues your city and politicians and every last TNR practitioner so bad that they never recover from it for the rest of their criminally negligent and criminally irresponsible sorry-excuses for lives. (For just one example of THOUSANDS, not long ago businesses in Miami were ruined by caretakers of feral-cats spreading hookworm in all the beaches. Lawsuits aplenty!)

These are just the diseases these invasive species vermin cats have been spreading to humans, not counting the ones they spread to all wildlife. THERE ARE NO VACCINES against many of these, and are in-fact listed as bio-terrorism agents. They include: Afipia felis, Anthrax, Bartonella (Rochalimaea) henselae, Bergeyella (Weeksella) zoohelcum, Campylobacter Infection, Cat Scratch Disease, Chlamydia psittaci (feline strain), Cowpox, Coxiella burnetti Infection (Q fever), Cryptosporidium Infection, Cutaneous larva migrans, Dermatophytosis, Dipylidium Infection (tapeworm), Hookworm Infection, Leptospira Infection, Giardia, Neisseria canis, Pasteurella multocida, Plague, Poxvirus, Rabies, Rickettsia felis, Ringworm, Salmonella Infection, Scabies, Sporothrix schenckii, Toxocara Infection, Toxoplasmosis, Trichinosis, Visceral larva migrans, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. [Centers for Disease Control, July 2010] Bovine Tuberculosis, Sarcosporidiosis, Flea-borne Typhus, Tularemia, and Rat-Bite Fever can now also be added to that list.

Yes, "The Black Death" (the plague) is alive and well today and being spread by people's cats this time around. People have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA. For a fun read, one of hundreds of cases, Google for: Cat-Transmitted Fatal Pneumonic Plague

You did know, didn't you, that giving a rabies shot to a cat that already has rabies does not cure it of rabies? Google for: RABID KITTEN ADOPTED WAKE COUNTY (for just one example of hundreds of rabid cats adopted from outdoors). The incubation period for rabies is, on average, from 21 to 240 days, sometimes up to 11 months, one rare case being 6 years. A vetted cat can STILL transmit rabies many months later (during the last 2 weeks before it dies of rabies) if it was harvested from unknown rabies-exposure conditions with an unknown vaccination history. May one of those cats you adopt-out have rabies too. Is your liability insurance in excess of $10M? Either quarantine them for 6 or more months at your OWN expense (as required by national and international law), or euthanize them. Those are your only 2 options to be relatively certain you are not handing rabies to someone. Isn't reality fun?

Google for: RABIES PROMPTS CARLSBAD TNR CAT PROGRAM SUSPENSION

Rabies outbreak caused by TNR! 50+ pets euthanized. ALL stray cats destroyed. All livestock destroyed. More than a dozen homeowners pay for their own $3000+ rabies shots for EACH family member.

Google for: Rabies Outbreak in Westchester County

Google for: Rabid Kitten Jamestown Exposure

There's hundreds more like those on the net showing everyone how these phenomenally ignorant and foolish cat-lickers "help" their communities by allowing TNR CAT-HOARDERS to continue their criminally negligent behavior. And contrary to these cat-lickers' perpetual LIES, feeding stray cats TRAINS them to approach humans for food. What do you think happens to the child or foolish adult that reaches down to try to pet or pick up that now seemingly friendly "cute kitty" that just approached them? The wild animal lashes out and bites or scratches the hand that has no food for them. Resulting in $3000+ rabies shots for each victim of a cat-feeder's criminally negligent behavior, paid for out of the victim's OWN pockets. Two reports even document rabid cats entering a pet-door and one even came through the family's ceiling in search of human supplied foods, the attack so bad that the whole family required hospitalization.

This is why even the CDC has issued direct warnings against the use of these failed TNR programs anywhere and everywhere: onlinelibrary.wiley D0T com SLASH doi/10.1111/zph.12070/abstract
March 03, 2014 at 10:49am
The TNR CON-GAME

FACT: Trap & Kill failed because cats cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control.

FACT: Trap, Neuter, & Re-Abandon (TNR) is an even bigger abject failure because these man-made ecological disasters cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control, and they also continue to cruelly annihilate all native wildlife (from the smallest of prey up to the top predators that are starved to death), and the cats continue to spread many deadly diseases that they carry today — FOR WHICH THERE ARE NO VACCINES AGAINST THEM. Many of which are even listed as bioterrorism agents. (Such as Tularemia and The Plague — Yes, people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA. No fleas nor rats even required. The cats themselves carry and transmit the plague all on their own.)

FACT: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY _NOTHING_ HUMANE ABOUT TNR. Nearly every last TNR’ed cat dies an inhumane death by road-kill, from cat and animal attacks, environmental poisons, starvation, dehydration, freezing to death, infections, eaten from the inside-out by parasites, etc. And if very very lucky humanely shot to death or re-trapped and drowned (the two most common methods employed on all farms and ranches to protect their gestating livestock’s offspring and valuable native wildlife dying from cats’ Toxoplasmosis parasites). This doesn’t begin to count the thousands of defenseless native animals that cats skin alive and disembowel alive for their daily and hourly play-toys. And pitting cat against cat to fight-to-the-death for territory is ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENT than those who run criminal dog-fight rings to see who wins. They spend YEARS in jail. IT IS A HIGHLY PUNISHABLE CRIME TO FORCE *ANY* DOMESTICATED ANIMALS TO FIGHT EACH OTHER FOR THEIR VERY SURVIVAL.

FACT: The only difference in destroying cats immediately and humanely instead of trapping, sterilizing, then releasing them to an inhumane death and forcing them to fight-to-the-death for survival; is that money isn’t going into Becky Robinson's Alley-Cat-All-Lies pocket, or an HSUS or SPCA board-member’s pocket, veterinarian’s pocket, cat-food company CEO’s pocket, or a drug-company CEO’s pocket. And that’s the ONLY difference! Support yet another organization that exploits and perpetuates the suffering of animals for their own personal financial gain, then try to sleep well at night.

FACT: These manipulative, deceptive, and deceitful TNR proponents are now clipping cats ears ONLY. WITHOUT vaccinations nor sterilizing them. They do this to save money and protect their outdoor hoarded cat colonies from being trapped and euthanized by the state because the clipped-ear shows officials that they have been sterilized and vaccinated. Why pay $140 for each cat and all that time when just a trap and a simple snip of scissors on each one can also protect their hoarded cats from being destroyed? (I have absolute proof of this.)

FACT: Cats are a man-made (through selective breeding) invasive species. And as such, are no less of a man-made environmental disaster than any other caused by man. Cats are even worse than an oil-spill of continent-sized proportions. They not only kill off rare and endangered marine-mammals along all coastlines from run-off carrying cats’ Toxoplasma gondii parasites, they destroy the complete food-chain in every ecosystem where cats are found. From smallest of prey gutted and skinned alive for cats’ tortured play-toys, up to the top predators that are starved to death from cats destroying their ONLY food sources. (Precisely what cats caused on my own lands not long ago.)

FACT: Hunted To Extinction (or in this case, extirpation of all outdoor cats) is the ONLY method that is faster than a species like cats can exponentially out-breed and out-adapt to. Especially a man-made invasive species like these cats that can breed 2X-4X’s faster than any naturally occurring cat-species.

FACT: In _FOURTEEN_YEARS_ Alley Cat ALL-LIES branch of NYC have only reduced feral cats in their own city by 0.08% to 0.024% (as the months go on that percentage becomes more insignificant), allowing more than 99.92% to 99.976% to exponentially breed out of control. Here’s how Alley-Cat-ALL-LIES’ deceptive math works: If you TNR 4 cats and 3 get flattened by cars this translates to 75% fewer feral-cats everywhere. Alley Cat ALL-LIES of NYC can’t even reduce cats in their own city, yet they promote it as a worldwide solution. Then even bigger fools fall for it and promote it.

FACT: When researching over 100 of the most “successful” TNR programs worldwide, JUST ONE trapped more than 0.4%. Oregon’s 50,000 TNR’ed cats (the highest rate I found) is 4.9% of all ferals in their state. Yet, by applying population growth calculus on the unsterilized 95.1% they will have trapped only 0.35% of all cats in their state sometime this year. Less than 0.4% is a far cry from the required 75%-85% to be the least bit effective.

FACT: Their mythical “vacuum effect” is a 100% LIE. A study done by the Texas A&M University proved that any perceived “vacuum” is just the simple case that CATS ATTRACT CATS. Get rid of them all and there are no cats there to attract more. I proved this myself by shooting and burying hundreds of them on my own lands. ZERO cats replaced them FOR FOUR YEARS NOW. If you want more cats, keep even one of them around, more will find you. That university study also found that sterilized cats very poorly defend any territory. Non-sterilized cats, being more aggressive, take over the sterilized cats’ resources (shelter & food if any). If there is any kind of “vacuum effect” at all, it is that sterilizing cats cause non-sterilized cats to restore the reproductive void.

FACT: During all this investigation I have discovered something that is unfaltering without fail. Something that you can bet your very life on and win every last time. That being — IF A TNR CAT-HOARDER IS TALKING THEN THEY ARE LYING. 100% guaranteed!
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