Monday, December 01, 2008

Wild: But Not a Pest?

By TIM MORAN
tmoran@modbee.com

last updated: October 09, 2007 03:20:56 PM

Tuolumne River Regional Park in Modesto is one of the county's most beautiful parks, says Karen Mosser, a daily visitor.

Mosser isn't there just to soak up the ambience, though. She's there to take care of some of the park's residents: a colony of feral cats.

About 20 of them live in blackberry bushes. Wary of people and predators, they tend to stay hidden. But when Mosser's car pulls into the park, they come running.

She knows them all.

"Sylvester is the head male of the colony. He's a black and white 'tuxedo' cat, and he rules the roost," Mosser said. Some are shy, and there always seem to be newcomers, kittens and tame adult cats dumped by owners who no longer want them.

Mosser traps the new arrivals and gets them sterilized. They get a tell-tale notch on their ear, so she knows which have been fixed.

"You must fix the cats if you are feeding them," Mosser said.

The idea of maintaining a feral cat colony is that if the members are sterilized and fed daily, they can live out their lives without breeding and adding to cat overpopulation.

Statistics on feral cats are hard to come by because the cats are almost impossible to count. Estimates of the population nationwide are 60 million to 70 million.

Feral cat organizations estimate that one pair of breeding cats and their offspring can produce more than 400,000 cats in seven years.

Stanislaus County officials and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals support the trap, neuter and return concept, but not everyone does.

The American Bird Conservancy and the Wildlife Society oppose the practice because they consider feral cats to be a non-native species that preys on native birds and rodents.

The Stanislaus Audubon Society hasn't taken a stand, but the national Audubon Society contends that feral and free-ranging domestic cats have a "significant, negative impact on bird populations."

Feral cat colonies must be registered with Stanislaus County, and the caretaker must feed the cats daily and make a "reasonable" effort to sterilize the members of the colony, according to the county's animal control ordinance.

The alternatives -- trapping and taking the cats to the county animal shelter to be euthanized, or letting them continue to breed, adding to the county's overpopulation of stray cats -- are unacceptable to Mosser and others who adopt feral colonies.

Neva Walker cares for colonies in downtown Waterford and at the Fox Grove Fishing Access on the Tuolumne River at Geer Road. Rozelle Seifert tends a colony behind a shopping center in northeast Modesto.

Unlikely callings

The colony tenders say they got started largely by accident. Seifert was driving through the shopping center four years ago when she spotted some wild cats "running around and looking desperate."

There was no food or water, Seifert said, and the cats were suffering. She left food and water, and when she returned the next day, it was gone. Now she feeds them daily and has trapped and sterilized them all. She found adoptive homes for a few, and the colony has stabilized at eight cats, she said.

Those who tend the colonies typically pay for sterilizations out of their own pockets and rely on programs, such as the Alley Cat Guardians' spay-neuter clinic events, to reduce costs.

On a visit to Tuolumne River Regional Park, Mosser said she saw a man feeding the cats, but he wasn't trapping and sterilizing them. She had read an article in The Bee about maintaining feral cat colonies and decided to try it, she said.

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