The Feral Cat Committee
As you may or may not be aware, there are large numbers of feral cats living on campus, especially near the Towers, the mobile home park, and the townhomes. In these areas, they live, feed, breed, and die. As these animals sometimes carry diseases, and frequently die and need to be cleaned up, they are considered a problem to the housing administrators. Traditionally the way to cope with these animals is to catch them and "put them to sleep". There are some problems with this solution, though: first, students often adopt these animals, feeding and naming them; second, these cats help keep the rodent population down on campus.
About an hour ago, I learned that USU has started a Feral Cat Committee, with the purpose of coming up with alternative solutions to the problem. Ideas include spaying and neutering to keep the population from swelling out of control, allowing students to adopt the animals, and setting up feeding stations for the cats. Essentially, they hope to establish and maintain a colony of feral cats on campus as has successfully been done at several other universities.
So far, I think it's a good idea because it makes students more liable for their own choices to feed these animals, it's less cruel to the animals, and if it fails, the spayed or neutered animals will not be a problem in the long run and others can still be caught and put down, but I wanted to hear thoughts from the rest of the class on the subject.
Incidentally, if anyone wants to get involved as a volunteer or help on the committee, I can put you in touch with the person in charge. Just leave a comment with your name and e-mail address, and say that you want to get involved. I'll make the connections for you.
posted by Anonymous @ 10:47 PM
3 Comments:
Having the University pay people bounties for killing the cats is not a viable solution. USU has a lot of donators, such as Kathryn Wanlass and Manon Russell who have donated $8.5 million to the new recital hall. Having bounties placed on the kitties would create a negative image of the University, which would likely reflect badly on the image of USU. If USU gets that bad image for being cats killers, it is likely it will reflect negatively on donations. So if USU spays 100 cats for a cost of $5,000 dollars I would consider that an acceptable risk to avoid a reputation for being cat killers.
If we are going to keep the cats on campus and spay them, who's going to catch them, and who's paying for the person catching them? Plus, if we spay and neuter them, supposedly the population of feral cats should decrease, which would also decrease the number of rodents killed and students with these feral cat pets. It’s an ok idea but I definitely have to side with either eliminators or re-locators. Wild animals carry disease and other than clearing the rodents, which I have never seen in a campus building ever, I see no real plus to keeping them around.
Andy:
Your argument about the cost of catching the cats to spay or neuter them applies equally well to the cost of catching them to kill or relocate them. From what I understand, the cost of putting a cat to sleep is very high, and relocating them doesn't necessarily work. Relocated animals have an annoying tendency to return to where they came from.
As for them being these horrible "wild" animals, most of these feral cats were originally domesticated. Somebody decides to give their kid or friend a pet for college, and when they graduate, they leave the animal behind. On the links in my post, they tell us that most feral cats can be domesticated relatively easily. By keeping the population down, and using students to monitor them (and eventually adopt them), the school hopes to reduce the number of dead cats on campus - which is a big health issue. They also don't eliminate the possibility of killing them if necessary.
Having students feed and care for these cats would probably lead to many of them becoming "semi-domesticated", relying on humans for food. I wonder how well they would compete with animals that are less domesticated, and therefore both more wild and more hungry.
PS As for my personal opinions on cats, I hate the things. That's largely because I'm allergic to them, though.
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