WILD CAT PROBLEM? HERE'S A SOLUTION

FERAL CATS COME WITH A HOST OF PROBLEMS

Wendy Nicholson doesn't really mind that there is a cat hotel under her back deck. But she also worries that just giving them a place to live isn't solving the problem in the long run. So she went on a quest to find a solution.

Nicholson lives in downtown Bracebridge, close to the falls. As in many communities, there are lots of feral cats in her neighbourhood. It's impossible to know how big the feral cat population is because they are very good at hiding under the radar.

Feral cats can be useful. They help keep the rodent population down, but they're not the best of neighbours in other ways. They carry diseases, they fight, make a lot of noise and kill songbirds and small animals. They can be a nuisance.

Last year, when Nicholson first decided to find out what she could do about the wild cats living under her deck, she reached out to the Town of Bracebridge. The town website tells people to contact Muskoka Animal Rescue, a small non-profit volunteer organization with an ambitious program to deal with the problem.

Sue Hummel is animal care manager for Muskoka Animal Rescue. The organization is run entirely on donations and the work of dedicated volunteers.

Hummel says the best thing ordinary people can do for these community cats is to get them "TNR'd." TNR stands for trap-neuter (vaccinate)-return. Her organization can help — the rescue lends live traps to people, and when the cat is apprehended, they transport the cats to the spay/ neuter clinic in Barrie. They then house the cats as they recover from surgery and return them to the location where they were trapped. They also cut a bit off the tip of the ear of cats so the spayed cats can be identified and released if they're trapped again.

Early spring is the beginning of mating season for cats, so every spayed cat helps stop the populations from growing. Hummel says spaying cats has other benefits.

"Females will no longer go into heat, which involves a lot of yowling and disturbance at all hours of the night."

It also helps prevent cat fights between males defending their territories.

Hummel says there are other ways to help keep the cats in the neighbourhood happy and healthy. Putting out food and water and providing them with a warm place to nest is helpful. The Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has many useful tips on building weather-protected shelters and caring for cats in general. And, she says, you can take them in as a house pet if you can get the cat to trust you. That works better with kittens than older cats.

Muskoka Animal Rescue manages to do a lot with very few resources. In 2021, they received a small amount of funding from the Town of Bracebridge, but nothing since.

"The money was very helpful in covering some of our Feral Cat Project costs, but did not cover it all. To have a feral cat spayed/ neutered, vaccinated and flea/tick/dewormed, it is $95 per cat," said Hummel.

For Wendy Nicholson, the important question is "who is responsible for these community cats?" She says she feels bad about overburdening Muskoka Animal Rescue, which is already stretched to the limit.

"I felt terrible that I'm shipping it off to them only to have them have to deal with it. I wonder, whose responsibility is it to care for them and make sure they're safe?"

Hummel has a partial solution.

"I think it's important to note that when we are contacted about feral cats, we don't have the manpower to take care of all of the steps in the process ourselves, so it is a partnership between us and the person with the feral cats."

The responsibility, then, may belong to everybody who cares about the cats.

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: Feral cats can lead to a multitude of problems, ranging from annoyance to disease, so it's important to look at solutions like trap/spay/release.