Feral Friends

    Helping Feral Cats with Innovative Spay/Neuter Program

    Without a doubt, feral cats provide a great service to our community, especially when they live in a farm setting. By helping to control rodent populations in places native predators can no longer survive, feral felines help people. Unfortunately, there are problems that result from the free-roaming lifestyle of these felines. Most significantly, they can reproduce at an astonishing rate.

    One female cat and her offspring can produce 420,000 cats in just 7 years. That is because - even in a cold climate like Minnesota - they are capable of producing up to 3 litters of kittens per year. The kittens, in turn, are ready to reproduce by 6 months of age.

    In an urban, industrial or farm setting, where there is often abundant food, water and shelter, cat populations can explode quickly, creating big problems.

    Feral cats make up a significant percentage of the animals killed at animal shelters and impound centers every year. And a significant number of these feral cats are the result of feral cats breeding and disbursing the population in their home range grows too large.

    "Animal Ark and other animal shelters regularly get calls from property owners who are looking for humane ways of managing their cat populations," said Mike Fry, executive director of Animal Ark. "The cats are breeding out of control and they want a reasonable, humane way of keeping the problem from getting worse."

    "What many people do not realize with feral cats," Fry added, "is that there are always more cats there than you ever see."

    Living and behaving much like wild animals, feral cats quickly take on the behavior traits of the undomesticated ancestors and, therefore, avoid humans.

    Because of their wild behavior, most of these cats will never be trained or socialized to be good house pets. Killing them is not a humane solution and, ultimately does not resolve the issue in a meaningful way. Because it is impossible to destroy all of the cats on any property, and because they are so good at reproducing themselves, it takes almost no time at all before the population returns to its original level.

    "Each winter, there is significant die-off of the feral cat population in Minnesota," Fry added. "Because of our long, cold winters, most feral cat environments can only accomodate a small number of cats through the winter. So no matter how many cats are trapped or killed through the summer, you do not change the number that survive until spring. Then the breeding cycle starts all over again with the spring survivors."

    To tackle this problem, Animal Ark has launched a new program to help manage feral cats in a more humane and proactive way. . . by offering free spay/neuter services to people facing problems with feral cats.

    Using a combination of volunteers, staff, and contract help, Animal Ark will assist property owners to trap, surgically sterilize and release cats back onto their property.

    "As strange as it may seem, the way only real effective means of eliminating feral cat populations is by releasing sterilized cats onto the property. If you can achieve better than 70% sterilization rate, you can effectively manage the population until it dies off naturally," Fry said.

    Animal Ark's Neuter Commuter, a large, mobile, surgical hospital, run by a staff including a veterinarian and two technicians, will be used to perform the surgeries. It has the capacity to spay or neuter about 25 cats per day, at a cost of between $30 and $35 per surgery.

    "We need donations of all sorts to keep this program running," Fry said. "We need live traps, vari-kennels and other supplies. And we need to be able to pay veterinarians for their services."

    Fry added that each donation of $35 will sterilize one cat. Click HERE to make a donation.

    A slide show of the Neuter Commuter in action is available HERE.
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