Recently in feral cats Category
That's what Rhode Island's top veterinarian is saying as reported today in the Providence Journal:
"I'm not a cat hater. I'm a vet. I'm a cat lover," said state veterinarian Scott Marshall. "I just don't see another solution to it. The solutions we have tried are ineffective.
Marshall says feral cats are a health risk to humans and other animals because of the diseases they potentially spread, including parasites, feline HIV and rabies, which has been detected in a few cats in the past few years. He has proposed requiring animal-control officers to impound 'roaming and feral cats' and mandating that animal shelters accept them and put them to death.
Dennis Tabella, director of Defenders of Animals, calls the idea 'inhumane and outrageous' and says that 'no cat, domestic or feral, that spends time outdoors will be safe. If this becomes law, your neighbor will be able to take your cat and turn it over to a shelter, where your cat is likely to be euthanized.'"
Marshall goes on to say that he doubts laws requiring that cats be spayed or netuered are working.
One outraged animal-rights advocate called it the "Final Solution" for feral felines, according to the article written by Journal staff writer Richard Salit.
So what do you think? Has Trap-Neuter-Return/Release worked? How can it be made more effective?
Six conservation groups won a lawsuit on Friday against the City of Los Angeles and its Department of Animal Services to stop the practice of encouraging feral cat colonies until the legally required environmental impact reviews are performed.
The Los Angeles Superior Court found that the City of Los Angeles had been "secretly and unofficially" promoting "Trap-Neuter-Return," a controversial program to allow feral cats to run free, even while the Department of Animal Services promised to conduct an environmental review of the program.
The Court ordered the City to stop implementing TNR.
The plaintiffs, The Urban Wildlands Group, Endangered Habitats League, Los Angeles Audubon Society, Palos Verdes/South Bay Audubon Society, Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society, and the American Bird Conservancy, sued the City in June 2008 to ensure that the controversial program to sanction and maintain feral cat colonies was not implemented before a full and public environmental analysis.
Check out the Humane Society's video about feral cats being rescued from San Nicolas Island off the coast of Los Angeles.
The organization DoGreatGood.com made the project possible.
You can read more about it at this Humane Society page -- they have more pics also.
H/T:
The donation to GRACE Animal Rescue Inc. will help the nonprofit manage the population of 200 felines that has developed from household pets abandoned on the Chevron property.
"In today's economy, when it's actually cheaper to kill, they chose life," said Vanessa Bell, executive director of GRACE. "It made me rethink everything I used to think about oil companies."
Dr. Stacy Fuchino of the PV Village Pet Clinic has teamed up with Purrfect Partners to offer a
free spay-and-neuter clinic Sunday (Oct. 25) morning at the clinic, 201 Palos Verdes Blvd., Redondo Beach.
The event is geared for free-roaming cats and provides not only the surgery but also flea treatments. It is free for all caregivers and trappers of feral colonies. Donations, however, are welcome.
Reservations are required: Call 310-373-1585. Drop off time is between
7 and 8 a.m., with pickup between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
Organizers hope to offer more of the clinics in the future. This is the first.
I'm still waiting for photos, but there are 3 female (all spayed) kittens, 6-8 weeks old, who need foster homes.
Two are calico and one is gray and white. They are adorable, but will need someone who can take the time to gain their trust (they come from feral parents). They are hearty eaters!
Contact is Melissa 310-713-4220.
I will post the photos when we get them.
(I spoke with a contact I have with the Peter Zippi Fund for Animals in Hermosa Beach and she tells me that the kittens are probably at a critical stage in terms of socialization and their future potential in becoming good family pets: "They need to be around a lot of people a lot of the time or you can lose them," she told me. "At that age they're either going to make it or not. The more kids and people in the household, the better.")
Our colleague Sandy Mazza reports that Cooper, her new kitten whom we've posted extensively about before, is doing very well, thank you.
This past weekend he watched the movie Babe with Sandy and liked it a lot. He has received some new toy mice and a new toy bunny to hunt and kill. Repeatedly.
But his favorite prey? Sandy's feet (Oww!):
Here are some more shots of our favorite formerly-feral kitten, now almost 4 months old. You can see he is quite content in his new home (and is, Sandy says, showing signs of becoming a lay-about "bum"):
Update: I received a call after this story ran from Debra Corwin, who operates Purrfect Partners cat rescue in the Sough Bay. She confirmed that this year is proving to be more than a challenge.
"It's more than a strain. The dam has broken," she said of the flood of homeless cats. "It's escalating. It was an epidemic before the economy changed, just ask the people in rescue or your vet."
She advocates more mandatory spay-and-neuter laws for local cities. In the meantime, rescue groups are at a breaking point, she says.
"Everybody is getting very burned out."
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A story in today's Daily Breeze should be read by everyone concerned about what seems to be the still-growing problem of pet overpopulation.
Specifically, the city of Los Angeles is experiencing a huge influx this summer -- especially of cats -- and is having to euthanize healthy animals as a result.
The shelters are so overcrowded that the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services is offering two-for-one cat adoptions to make room for the feline influx.
(Above, Adan Lozoya checks the cats in the Harbor Animal Care Center, 957 N. Gaffey St., San Pedro. Photo: Scott Varley/Daily Breeze)
Capt. Daniel Pantoja, who heads up the new harbor shelter (which opened in June 2008) responsible for the Harbor Area, said they're using every space they can to house the kittens and cats that are being brought in. When I spoke to him Tuesday afternoon, the shelter had 104 cats. The problem: The shelter was built with only 24 permanent cat cages and has had to borrow dozens more portable cages to help handle the overflow.
"I'm at capacity and every other shelter is as well," Pantoja said. "We have cats in cages in the hallways, in the lobby, in rooms that are supposed to be for quarantined animals. ... We're using every space we can."
The economy has been the main culprit, according to reporter Dana Bartholomew of our sister paper the Daily News who wrote the story. There has been a surge in abandoned pets since May 2008, when soaring job losses and home foreclosures began fueling an increase in surrendered dogs and cats at city shelters.
But contributing to the situation, Pantoja told me, is the fact that because so many cats are free-roaming -- and do not fall under licensing laws in the city -- it becomes much harder to enforce any kind of spay-and-neuter ordinance on felines.
"How do we enforce (laws) on those stray cats that people feed all the time?" Pantoja said of the ferals that proliferate so quickly. "It starts out with people feeling sorry for the cats, thinking they'll starve to death, but that's not really the case. So they set up feeding stations and then it winds up being a colony and then the colony expands and the cats wind up at the shelter."
For every child that's born, Pantoja said, 45 cats are born. That gives you an idea of how this problem has so quickly spun out of control.
A sad case in point: Jooniper, the cat featured as last week's Pet of the Week in the paper, was euthanized after no one adopted him.
Any thoughts out there on what more can or should be done? How this problem can be more effectively tackled?
Forgive us for indulging.
Consider us all doting aunts and uncles to co-worker Sandy Mazza's new kitten, but we can't get enough.
This is one cute -- and lucky -- feral kitten.
He remains nameless, however, although Sandy did really appreciate the suggestions one reader sent us (and she especially liked one of the names, "Rory.")
But Sandy is still mulling it all over when it comes to deciding on a name.
She's leaning back (I think) toward Cormac, which she'd originally thought about. Irish is the theme (since the cat is orange) so I've tried to be helpful, trying to inspire. I've dutifully sent her lists of:
Irish saints ("Uh, uh" she said, shaking her head as she read through the names.)
Irish rivers ("No." 'Nuf said.)
Irish boy names. (Nope, nothing there, she said.)
Dang.
But isn't he just so cute???
Sandy's now collecting office gifts for her new kitten -- a scratching post and treats appeared at her desk today (courtesy of fellow Daily Breeze staffer & cat owner Andrea Woodhouse):
And here's the kitty with one of his mice -- no name yet, Sandy's thinking of something Irish since he's orange. Suggestions welcome.
About the Bloggers
Daily Breeze reporter Donna Littlejohn has shared her homes with a succession of wonderful, funny, and occasionally difficult canines -- Muffin, Fritz, Ellie, Mercy, Pilgrim and now Cowboy, an Australian shepherd-border collie, and Tess, a border collie. From strong-willed terriers to weirdly obsessed Australian shepherds, they've invaded her world with boundless energy, wet noses, muddy paws and soggy tennis balls. But they've really brought so much more than that -- like laughter and joy, some unexpected life lessons, and more than a few tears along the way.
E-mail Donna at donna.littlejohn@dailybreeze.com.
Josh Grossberg grew up with the usual array of animals: goldfish, dogs, hamsters, parakeets and turtles. He now owns the loudest dog in the South Bay(Video: Rocket the Dog) and is the least popular person on his block. He spends his free time in dog parks, pet shops and always has an extra plastic bag in his pocket just in case. He also has a cat.
E-mail Josh at josh.grossberg@dailybreeze.com.