Forget greedy developers and overpaid politicians, the most powerful force running around HRM’s streets is its feral cat population.
Think about it for a minute: A research paper published in Nature Communications found that as many as 3.7 billion birds and 21 billion small mammals are killed each year by cats, and that’s just in the United States. The vast majority of those deaths can be attributed to feral cats—non-domesticated felines normally born from strays or abandoned pets.
Depending on which estimates you go by, there are anywhere from 40,000 to possibly 250,000 stray cats in the Halifax Regional Municipality. Those kitty colonies not only seriously endanger native wildlife, but they also spread disease and can prove a noisy nuisance for residents who have to listen to them fighting and dating.
It’s gotten to be such a problem, that Halifax Regional Council recently stepped in and voted to institute a five-year grant program to help solve the city’s feral cat crisis. The program will offer $50,000 annually to the SPCA and Spay Day HRM to trap, vaccinate and sterilize feral cats.
It’s based off a successful pilot program that in 2016 fixed nearly 800 felines, which the SPCA estimates prevented the birth of over 54,000 feral kittens.
Each surgery costs about $60, and requires dozens of volunteer hours to care for the animals pre- and post-surgery, as well as treat any medical issues before releasing them back into the world.
Similar programs are already widely used elsewhere around the globe, but their effectiveness is open to debate. Some wildlife groups argue instead of releasing the cats, the animals should either be placed in local shelters or humanely euthanized. But even with years of socialization around humans, feral cats don’t always make for good pets. It’s also unlikely municipal officials will want to be on-record voting for a cat-killing motion.
But there’s another solution Halifax hasn’t tried yet: Put the cats to work.
Now, yes, that’s some tired capitalistic dogma we’re proposing to solve a cat problem. Though it’s worth bearing in mind you can’t dehumanize a worker that’s not human. But also, the federal government successfully drafted stray felines into its cat sanctuary for decades in an effort to keep Parliament Hill free of non-elected rats.
Halifax—a port city undergoing a construction boom—has its own infestation issues. And now that we’ve lost our preeminent “rodent control officer” on the waterfront (RIP Erik, facing page) maybe it’s time for some of these feral cats to earn their keep.
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Citizen Gus
This article appears in Oct 19-25, 2017.
There will always be feral cats. People in different communitues see barn cats or fishing areas you’ll see wharf cats. They serve a purpose in many ways. The TNR program is a great way to control the population and the city rat problem too.
I think some areas maybe see more than others but you may find out by mass euthenizations you’ll see worse nuisance problems arise, believe me! There are many dedicated people out there trying to do a good job asking with local vets to aid in the population control.
I’m not so sure this article is giving much sympathy to the cats when it is careless ownership that creates this problem to begin with. I fail to see how a picture of a cat with a leather jacket and a knife helps dispell the myths about feral cats. They aren’t remorseless killing machines; it’s called survival after they’ve been abandoned. Feral cats make good pets and often will socialize well enough.
The TNR program is a start, but this population explosion has been around a long time and Halifax council has been BEGGED to give money to rescues to do such programs for years. Great! Now triple that budget, and give it to other rescues to help. Every. Year.
The cats just can’t get a break. We see a roaming dog and everyone jumps to help. We see roaming cats and blame them for keeping us awake at night.
Feline disease like FIV and Feline Leukemia are not a risk to other animals or humans either, what these diseases DO effectively do is kill off said ferals in a horrible, long term suffering sort of way.
“Let them eat rats”
The onslaught of feral cats is a result of humans leaving their cats behind when they move. abandoned them because they’re too much of a problem! Perhaps the municipality should impose a rule that all cats are chipped.that way they can be tracked back to the original owner and ultimately be responsible for the cats that end up outside. So if a cat is adopted from a rescue or the SPCA, then before they are adopted out they have to be chipped. at least that way a lot of the cats will be monitored. And I agree with the other person you start euthanize cats which is a cruel and uncaring thing to do in the first place. We will see more rats than we ever have. why don’t they try to capture the cats and put them out in the Bedford area and other places where there are a multitude of rats around. maybe that would reduce the number of rodents! Why take it out of the poor defenseless cats when it’s humans that have ultimately caused this problem anyway. I have a feral and she might not let me pet her but she gets along fantastic with my other cats and my dog, so although they cannot be affectionate at least she has a place that is warm and she’s getting fed every day. What about barn cats I’m sure there are a lot of barns that can use some cats. I would say there are other Alternatives than euthanizing!
Didnt the City have this problem twenty years ago, and they did a big cat kill and then the rat problem got out of control and so then they to go around asking other cities for some feral cats to import?
People who assume that feral cats are not affectionate or cannot be domesticated are absolutely wrong. I have two feral cats who, after living their first 5 months outdoors, now live entirely indoors with me and they are affectionate, cuddly, playful, and just like other cats in their behaviour except that they are nervous of unfamiliar people and loud noises. There is a feral cat rescue organization in Windsor, Ontario called CARA (Cat Advocacy and Rescue Association) which traps, sterilizes, treats, houses, domesticates, and eventually adopts out exclusively feral cats. These cats make wonderful pets as any other cat does. So, please, people, drop the assumptions and base statements on fact. Even adult ferals who have spent many years outdoors can be very affectionate with humans, even though they may prefer to live primarily outdoors with access to the indoors on a voluntary basis. I have experienced this as well. An adult feral was so closely bonded with me that no-one who saw us together would have believed that she was a feral cat. She played with toys with me, she slept on my lap, rubbed noses with me . . . . She was the best pet one could ask for. I also take issue with the classification of feral cats as a ‘problem’. The problem, as others have stated, is for the cats themselves who suffer because of human neglect and even abuse toward them. The idea of setting them loose in a field of rats is selfish and cruel as rats can cause significant harm to cats if bitten and can even transmit deadly diseases to them. It is the idiots who cause the feral cat crisis who should be maligned, not the feral cats. And, yes, as stated in another post, the picture in the article is obnoxious, as is the idea of killing feral cats. Let’s drop the veiled, deceptive language of “humanely euthanizing” ferals and call it what it is, which is killing innocent animals to satisfy the preferences and convenience of certain humans who prefer birds and small rodents to wild cats, who are also part of ‘wildlife’ and should not be categorized as an enemy to these other species. It is all part of the natural food chain and cats have as much right to that as any other species. It is humans who are the problem in this situation. Humans cause species extinction. Who is calling humans to account? Seriously, you want to pick on innocent, struggling cats? Look in the mirror first.