Showing posts with label TNR "Clark County" "Trap Neuter return" "Communit y Cats" C5 "Community Cat Coalition of Clark County" "feral cats". Show all posts
Showing posts with label TNR "Clark County" "Trap Neuter return" "Communit y Cats" C5 "Community Cat Coalition of Clark County" "feral cats". Show all posts
26 February 2010
Someone recently commented on another posting that I wrote. Their comment and my response follow.
- Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
"Most if not damn near all feral cat supports refuse to listen to reason much less acknowledge all the environmental damage feral cats do. They do spread all kinds of diseases and parasites, kill native wild life, push out native predators, dig in gardens and sandbox were kids play and leave behind cat crap that carries all kinds of pathogens.So what is the the solution? Solving the problem with mass eradication techniques like poisoning, trapping, using dogs, etc. would only be effective in a small isolated geographical area like an island. Trying the techniques anywhere in Las Vegas would be too expensive, politically unpopular, and for the most part illegal. Once you've cleared an area of cats, new ones will simply move in. So instead of any organized, concentrated effort to deal with the problem, we have citizens trapping nuisance cats all over the city and having them destroyed at taxpayer expense. Some 18,000 plus cats were euthanized in Clark County in 2008. Imagine if 12,000 of these animals were nuisance community cats. With a population of 200,000 community cats in the valley, how long does it take for the remaining 188,000 cats to replace those 12,000 through breeding? A couple of weeks?!?!? Show me the neighborhood, business or area in town that is free from feral cats because of trapping and having them removed.
Feral cats are pests, nuisances, and a danger to native wild life and feral cat colonies shouldn't be support. They need to be wiped out." - Anonymous
These are all valid concerns and should not be ignored, but when you say they need to be wiped out, you propose something that is clearly not possible! If you want to change the law so that it's legal to shoot or poison or do whatever it is you want to wipe the cats, go ahead! Until that time, we will continue to use the only legal and proven method to reduce the cat population.
Even if you could implement some fantasy solution it would not work. You could poison, shoot and trap them but you will never get them all. People will always find ways to feed cats and in a short period of time, you'll be back to being overrun by cats!
You can complain all you want or you can actually do something effective to control the population! Wishing for the cats to go away or bemoaning the fact that they kill wildlife will not help get rid of them. Trapping and killing them may reduce the population at one place temporarily, but as long as cats are reproducing in others it's like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon while the faucet is running
What if instead of destroying these animals, we sterilized them and returned them to the streets? Combined with the 7000+ Trap Neuter Returns being done by local volunteers and non-profits, there would be 10% of the population that was sterilized. We'd start to reach the 20,000 to 25,000 community cat sterilizations needed to really start to curbing the free-roaming cat population growth. The alternative? Continue to dump money into an endless pit and continue to drown in cats! Destroying these animals is waste of taxpayer resources! If the approach had any hope of working, stray/feral intakes at the shelter would not be continuing to rise at the alarming rate that they are!
The concept behind TNR is simple. Trap and remove the animal, and unsterilized animals will breed and replace that animal easily because there is less competition for food, shelter, habitat etc. Trap and sterilize an animal, and now the remaining unsterilized cats have to compete with the sterilized one for resources. Sterilize a significant portion in one area and the growth rate will slow. Sterilize enough animals in one area and the population will decline over time. Any unsterilized newcomers have to compete with the sterilized cats. I tell people that have a lot of cats around that they are going to be there anyways. Would you rather have sterilized ones that don't fight, spray, yowl in heat etc. or have kittens? Or would you rather have unsterilized cats moving into the habitat you conveniently provided for them by removing their competition?
Between Mar 2009 - Jul 2009 there were two approximately two dozen new litters of kittens born near the shelter where I volunteer. Many people were feeding the cats but few of them were sterilized. These kittens found there way into the shelter by people who had found theme. Many were sickly, many died, but many made their way into an already overburdened adoption program. Many were added to the existing cat population. I quickly made the connection between these feral cats breeding out of control, the mountain of cats at the shelter, and the embarrassing euthanasia and return rate this city has for cats.
Everyone in the area complained about the cats and the large number of kittens, but no one wanted to take responsibility for them. Property owners were victims and could do nothing but ask to have the cats removed and complain about the pests like bugs and birds which feasted on the food left by sloppy caretakers. Clark County Animal Control has neither the staffing nor mandate to trap cats. Caretakers had all manner of excuses. They were too busy, too poor, didn't have traps etc. to properly manage them. I learned about the county's 10.06 ordinance and decided to TNR the cats myself. I methodically cataloged the cats, where they were being fed and made contacts with the caretakers, property owners, and people who work and see the cats each day. Between 4 different sites, nearly 90 cats roamed and fed from an ample supply of food provided by caretakers who in many instances did not even know other people were feeding the same cats!
Borrowing traps and using spay/neuter slots paid for by donations or county grant money, I trapped and sterilized 3 cats at the monthly July HCWS feral clinic.
In Aug, I trapped 11, and followed on with 4 or 5 cats in weekly slots. In Sep, I trapped 22 for the clinic and followed on with another 9 that week. In Oct. we delivered another 14. At this point we had fixed nearly 60 cats and a significant percentage of the cats, 66% had been sterilized or removed to be adopted.
We have continued to trap the holdouts over the intervening months at this point have TNR'd nearly 70 cats and removed 7 for adoption. Since Oct. Only three kittens have survived and all three have been sterilized and returned. There are still viable male and female cats in the population, but they must compete with the 60+ cats that have been sterilized! This spring and summer we will see, but my trapping partner and I notice that there are visibly less cats than there were last year. There is no magic cure all for this problem but removing the cats provides only a very temporary fix. I must continually monitor and trap newcomers, but the same would be true if the cats had been removed. At least now, I can be assured that these newcomers have to compete with all of the fixed cats in the area for food!
Clearly I would not have invested the time and effort into this project, if the cats were going to be removed and destroyed? Nor would any of the people that helped me. We do a service for the community and save the taxpayers lots of money. How many kittens have we prevented from needlessly ending up at Lied to be euthanized at taxpayer cost? Support Trap Neuter Return, because whether you love them or hate them, we all want less cats!
11 December 2009
Mimi lives in a pretty rough section of town. Yvonne's been caring for Mimi ever since her original benefactor was driven from the area by thug neighbors. Braving threats from free-roaming dogs, angry neighbors, and panhandlers, Yvonne has been supplying food for Mimi for many months since her original caretaker moved. Fearing for Mimi's safety and her own, Yvonne decided to retrap Mimi and provide her with a permanent home off of the streets. Retrapping cats is often difficult and Mimi, was not an exception . Mimi scoffed at conventional traps, and a failed attempt to secure her with a net had left her weary of being approached one.Yvonne contacted me in Sep. to see if we could catch her with the drop trap. We went out and I set up the drop trap and moved about 50 feet away. The string went around a small bit of sage brush. In what turned out to be a fateful and humongous rookie error, I failed to clear the string before she moved over to the trap. Immediately she showed interest and barely entered the trap. Sure that she would move to the back of the trap, I waited. She moved forward into the trap, and, as though she suddenly realized what it was she froze and started to turn. Had the string been running straight, I would have immediately sprung the trap because I could see she was going to move, but I hesitated, and in that instance she left the trap.
I fixed the string and we waited to no avail. On Saturdays, the mission down the street serves breakfast. Hundreds of free-roaming humans passed by making it impossible to get her. A four or five month old kitten continually poked its head out from a sewer grate across the street. I moved the drop trap and impressed the homeless crowd by bagging the kitten after only a minute or two. The next morning we returned even earlier to avoid the crowds. A skinny woman came walking down the street.Noticing the drop trap she started moving towards it. I jumped out of my truck and started into my spiel about trapping the cat so it could go live with Yvonne.
er sunken eyes grew as wide as saucers and she shrieked, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THE CAT!" I realized that she was as high as a kite. The absurdity of trying to catch a feral cat at 4:00 AM in the middle of the hood sunk in and I burst out laughing. Horrified the woman quickly moved off, muttering and cursing.
Mimi studiously ignored the drop trap for over an hour. Another small black cat appeared and entered the trap. I decided to let it eat so that trapping it would not scare Mimi. Mistake #1 for the day. A larger black cat appeared and chased the smaller cat out. The larger black cat proceeded to eat all of the food in the trap and was in no hurry to get out of it. I finally ended up shooing him out of the trap! DOH! Mistake #2 for the day. Another hour passed and Mimi was clearly never going to enter the drop trap. Instead of having two black cats to NR, I was empty-handed, skunked! GRRRRR!!
Two mornings later we returned and Mimi still ignored the trap. I managed to catch the larger black cat who we had neutered and eventually returned. On yet another morning, we tried again while Mimi again ignored the drop trap. She was too well fed to fall for our shenanigans. We finally deemed that we needed to hatch a new plan. Nothing much happened for a couple of months. I couldn't drive by the area without cruising by to see if she was still there, sitting in the sage brush, and she usually was.
This week Yvonne called me and left a panicked message. She had found the carcass of the large black that cat we had TNR'd in Sep. The local thugs were allowing their dogs to roam unleashed and this one had fallen victim. The next morning I met her near the area and laid out the plan: I would go alone and set the drop trap and move off a good distance and wait in the truck. Yvonne would come 15 minutes later and place the bait into the trap, calling Mimi and making a big fuss.
I pulled up and unloaded the trap. Mimi was there, and she watched me intently, obviously waiting for a meal. I moved off about 150 feet away where I had a clear view of the trap. Eying the dangling pigeon feather in the trap, Mimi moved towards it. She sat right outside of it and regarded it curiously. A guy came walking down the street, spooking her away from the trap. GRRRR, I thought, "Here we go again!"Yvonne arrived, and instead of ignoring me and proceeding to the trap as I had expected, she parked behind me and walked up to the truck. I told her to pull up like she normally does and place the bait in the trap. She pulled up, and proceeded to park right in my line of sight so I could no longer see the drop trap! I got out of the truck and watched her bait the trap and attempt to lure Mimi to the trap. After several minutes Yvonne came back to me.Yvonne was short on time and had to leave for an appointment. I had little hope of our plan working. I told her to leave and I would watch the trap and see what happens. She continued to talk and I watched as Mimi moved towards the trap. She ducked her head under and regarded the foil bowl filled with turkey meat and tuna. I held my breath as she moved towards the food and then immediately sprung the trap when she was in position!
Serita and Yvonne were relieved because we now had Mimi safe. I was relieved because I had finally recovered from the initial mistake. People like Serita and Yvonne and have big hearts and I enjoy helping people like them and cats like Mimi when I can. I also really like getting the "one that got away"!
09 December 2009
Akvhuna and the other caretakers wanted to TNR more of the cats in the park. Without the resources and knowledge to perform a mass trapping, their previous attempts were not that productive. C5 volunteers worked with another local animal welfare group to bring in traps, secure spay/neuter slots, and assist with transportation and staging.
Akhuna, and other caretakers worked hard this year to help socialize and adopt out many of the cats from the park. At one point this year, they estimate that there were over 60 cats living in the park. After adoptions and some attrition, the various colonies now total around 33 cats. With 20 out of 26 in one section, having been neutered for sure, Akhuna and the other caretakers are well on their way to supporting our ultimate goal: less kittens in the spring!
05 December 2009
The Community Cat Coalition of Clark County (C5) is a newly formed all-volunteer non-profit whose mission is to reduce the number of healthy cats euthanized in local shelters through public outreach and education and by managing community cat colonies with Trap Neuter Return (TNR). C5 seeks to differentiate itself from other local animal rescue organizations by doing TNR and public education exclusively. C5 will not act as a foster, adoption or rescue agency for cats. These types of programs are money and labor intensive, a drain on limited resources and many exist in the valley already. C5 is focused primarily on building a community-based TNR program where caretakers, homeowners, business owners etc. participate in managing community cats at their locations. We now have a 125 traps in our trap bank that are available for loan without a deposit and offer classes TNR classes every two weeks. C5 also matches caretakers with low or no-cost spay neuter resources. Assistance with mentoring, staging and transportation of trapped cats is also available on a limited basis. C5 provides expert trapping services for those who are unable to trap for themselves, or in those cases when a very large number of cats need to be trapped in a single location. We also provide expert trapping services for the most difficult to catch holdouts or for those who prefer to pay a trapper to perform the TNR work for them.
C5 is working closely with the Las Vegas Valley Humane Society and Heaven Can Wait Society to coordinate and concentrate TNR efforts in the valley. In Oct. we worked together trap and neuter 140 free-roaming cats in a single 35-acre neighborhood over three days in the largest single TNR of free-roaming cats ever done in the valley. Last month, C5 volunteers and the monks at the Thai Buddhist temple successfully TNR'd 57 cats. Cats and monks will both be happier when there are no kittens in the spring! Future mass trapping events are being planned to take advantage of the economy of scale provided by bringing a lot of traps and trappers into a concentrated area.
The core group that forms C5's current officers started working together in summer of 2009 to help support Keith Williams in his role the Clark County Feral Central Sponsor. Mr. William's is a county appointed volunteer whose role is to act as a buffer between animal control and the community cat caretakers. He will not provide their information to animal control and acts to try to resolve disputes between parties. Registering as caretakers and registering their colonies provides certain protections for both animals and caretakers.
For more information about the Feral Cat Colony ordinance, visit http://www.clarkcountyferalcats.org
Upcoming TNR classes will be on Dec 19th at the Winchester Recreation Center and on Jan 9th at Heaven Cant Wait Society's spay/neuter clinic on 547 N. Eastern from 12:30 -2:30 PM. Email TNRClass@gmail.com to register.
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