BELLOWS FALLS — What's the best way to deal with feral cats? Prevent more from being created.
A spay and neuter program now being introduced into Bellows Falls is aimed at just that: controlling feral cat colonies.
According to www.Feralcatproject.org, feral cats are those felines “living in a wild state after domestication.” The site also describes them as “free-roaming cats,” which covers “all lost, abandoned, loosely owned, and stray cats in addition to feral.”
These animals live very hard lives, between the struggle for food and shelter and multiple pregnancies every year. Add disease and fighting, and their life span is significantly decreased.
To the rescue: PetSmart Charities (www.petsmartcharities.org), the charitable arm of PetSmart's retail chain, and the Windham County Humane Society (WCHS), which have teamed up to bring Sara White, a nonprofit veterinarian, here to stabilize feral cat colonies in Bellows Falls.
“I had heard that Bellows Falls had a [large] feral cat population,” said WCHS Executive Director Annie Guion. “The Vermont Humane Federation had received a grant from PetSmart Charities to do trap/neuter/return, or TNR, of feral cats statewide. That went very well. PetSmart Charities does a really good job at looking at the issue and putting money towards solving the feral cat challenge, and they have pretty specific guidelines on how to do it.”
WCHS plans six TNR clinics for feral or free-roaming cats. This method of trapping the cats is a widely used practice in America. This service also includes basic vaccinations to keep disease rates down among colonies.
The goal of this program is to get a better idea of the size of colonies in the area and stabilize the population, as well as ease the lives of the feral cats.
A first spay/neuter session was held March 22. Sessions are scheduled for April 8, May 6, June 13, Sept. 9, and Oct. 18, with more dates added as needed. Some 30 to 40 cats are expected to be altered each day.
“You need to focus your efforts,” said Guion. “If you just did scattershot TNR across Windham County, the rate at which you spay and neuter will not overtake the rate at which they reproduce.”
Feral versus domesticated
According to WCHS Animal Care Manager Keri Roberts, the true feral cat often will hide out in the very back of the cage and try to make itself unnoticed. They don't want to have any interaction with people.
“A domesticated cat, on the other hand, will show some sign that they recognize human socialization, and we label them as friendly. Some of the cats we get could be free-roaming stray cats. They're raised by people who might not know about the WCHS spay and neuter program. Some of the cats we will be doing will be friendly,” Roberts said.
The TNR program that WCHS plans to implement will reduce the size of the colony and stifle some of the aggressiveness that exists in non-spayed/neutered cats. WCHS plans to develop a trapping team to catch feral cats the night before so they can be ready for the procedure in the morning.
Once the procedure is done, and while the cat is still anesthetized, the vet will clamp and trim the tip of an ear off to mark the cat as spayed/neutered.
Keep your kitty indoors, lest she be snipped
If you are used to letting your cat roam at night, WCHS reminds cat owners that trapping will be done the night before, so plan to keep your cat indoors if you do not want it altered.