Feeding A Stray? Neuter Or Spay

By Monica Roberto

The similarities we can watch between a wild lion or tiger stalking his prey on the Discovery Channel and a fluffy housecat stalking a toy mouse remind us that the domestic cat shares an important kinship with his wild cousins. That inherited feline wildness usually lurks beneath the surface of our pets, but is the stuff of day-to-day survival for the feral cats in our community. While genetically identical to housecats, feral cats have very different lives because these cats grow up without human contact or revert to a wild state after months or years of self-sufficiency after being lost or abandoned.

While so shy as to sometimes remain unseen, feral cats are unfortunately common. Animal lovers who encounter these lean and hungry-looking cats when they show up in the backyard or find a makeshift home behind the buildings at work often cannot resist the urge to put out food. The compassion and goodwill that drive us to help animals in need is its own reward. But, beware. Cats are creatures of habit, and an initial act of kindness can quickly become a daily labor of love. Before you know it, kitty is showing up every day, sometimes bringing along hungry friends.

Why feed these wild cats? While feral cats have adapted well to living outdoors, their quality of life improves dramatically when they have a human caretaker who provides them with fresh food, water, and shelter daily. Fortunately for Newtown residents, there are several organizations that make becoming a feral cat caretaker a lot easier by offering low-cost neutering, as well as food and shelter support — The Animal Center being one of them.

The most important step you can take to help a feral cat is to have him or her neutered or spayed and vaccinated by a veterinarian. It’s called “Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR).” The strategy behind TNR is simple but very effective: stop the colony from growing by preventing new litters. Where kittens have been born in a colony, they can often be removed to foster homes, socialized, and eventually placed into adoptive homes. For the adults, who are usually too wild to socialize, they are returned to their home colonies and looked after by a volunteer caretaker after being neutered by a vet, and the colony population reduces gradually through natural attrition.

You may be thinking, “But I’m not feeding a colony, I’m only feeding one cat.” The most common situation we hear from Newtowners is that they started out feeding just one cat, and the next thing they knew there were kittens coming to the food bowl. Feral cats are prolific breeders. Don’t wait until you see kittens to get the cat to the vet for neutering. A female cat can start producing kittens when she’s 5 months old.

Females can produce two litters a year, with an average litter size of four kittens. Once the kittens arrive, the size of the colony will grow until it reaches a natural ceiling, that being how many cats the available food supply and shelter can support.

The Animal Center’s volunteer staff is sometimes asked, “Why can’t you come get this feral cat and find him a good home?”

“Rescuing” a feral cat by placing him in a shelter or foster home once it is grown is usually a recipe for unhappiness for both the cat and would-be rescuer. Feral cats are unsocialized to people. Some bite and scratch when handling is attempted, while others cower or “freeze up,” sometimes urinating on the handler as petting is attempted. Cats who have lived outdoors their entire lives can sometimes adapt to being indoors, but it is a very slow, stressful, and uncertain process. For the cat’s sake, allowing him to live out his life in the territory he knows as home after being neutered and vaccinated by a vet is usually a far more compassionate choice than letting the cat languish for years in a shelter cage or be killed when he doesn’t get adopted.

If you are feeding a feral cat in Newtown, or know someone who is, contact The Animal Center to set up an appointment for trapping and neutering now, before any kittens arrive. For all of us animal lovers, it’s never easy to see an animal in need. But while we work toward the day when every cat will have a loving home, for those too wild to be adopted, TNR is the most compassionate and effective way to help. The Animal Center may be reached at 270-0228 or info@theanimalcenter.org (email preferred).

Monica Roberto is president of The Animal Center, which is a Newtown-based, volunteer staffed animal welfare charity. In 2008, The Animal Center’s feline programs assisted 210 feral cats and placed 138 cats/kittens into adoptive homes. The Animal Center is a 501(c)()3 publicly supported charity, and can be reached through its website, www.TheAnimalCenter.org.