While more and more people are becoming aware of feral cats, it still seems to come as a shock to them when they learn the volume of kittens that can be produced! It is my personal theory that Kind-Hearted Cat Lovers have created the cat over-population situation. Let me explain.

In “the wild”, a litter of, say 4 kittens, would have a 50% mortality rate by the time the kittens were 4 weeks old. Then an additional 50% would die by the time they were 4 months old. Death can be due to predation, disease, unfortunate genetic mutation, or just too many kittens in the litter. Predation can be from coyotes, raccoons, dogs, cars, birds of prey and even tom cats have been known to eliminate the kittens fathered by another tom, somehow they seem to know. The mom cats cannot be with the kittens 24/7. Disease can be as simple as flea infestation resulting in anemia. All kittens have some form of worms, some are healthy enough to handle it, while in others it can lead to death. Poor nutrition can result in an increased amount of upper respiratory and other ailments. If the colony has been reproducing at a fast pace and there have been no vaccinations administered, an entire colony can fall ill. Cats are prolific reproducers. Environmental factors can produce mutations and mistakes when the genes are synching up, resulting in tiny errors. Kittens grow really fast, too, and those tiny errors may not be a problem when the kitten is just born, but an insurmountable problem when they reach 4 months. Organs that are just not quite right can support a creature weighing a pound, but when that creature grows to 4 pounds it will fail. You may have heard of “fading kitten syndrome,” and this may be a cause. A mom cat can give birth to 1 to 8 kittens. Colonies will increase production to match and exceed resources available. If everything works out right and none of the kittens die, it is the rare mom that can continue to support 8 kittens to weaning even if there is sufficient food. She would have to eat constantly and her body would give out, if not her milk supply. Somehow the moms know this and make a decision. This can be why you find the single kitten, crying in the window well or middle of the driveway, this is the one left behind as she reduces her load. She may also abandon kittens that she senses may have an illness or weakness, knowing that her efforts will not pay off in the long run.

So, back to the Kind-Hearted Cat Lovers (KHCLs)

The KHCLs come upon a litter of kittens, the mom is out shopping and the KHCLs assume the kittens are ABANDONED!!! and sweep them up to SAVE!!! them. They take them to a shelter, after dozens of phone calls with much begging and promises of monetary donations if the shelter will just save these kittens. Now, these are kittens that up to 75% of whom would die on their own. The shelter expends every resource (money, time, space) to make each and every kitten live. As they should. This can be an enormous drain on the shelter and has caused many to go belly-up as the kittens get older and the frequency of adoptions are reduced as the kittens age. Shelter conditions can go downhill despite the efforts of staff and volunteers – overcrowding and the resulting illnesses and expense to treat those illnesses. The shelters in this situation are then unable to pull adoptable animals from animal control – directly leading to increased euthanasia due to lack of space. And in the meantime, the mom cat, free of this last litter, is pregnant again and will produce another 1 to 8 kittens in a few weeks.

“TNR IS THE ONLY OPTION” would be the best motto to follow.

You hear “Adoption is the only option” – that is if the alternative is euthanasia. A few people have heard “We cannot adopt our way out of this” and that is much more accurate. There are not enough homes in this country or the world, to place all the cats that are living right now, as you are reading this. What TNR does is prevent births and by preventing births it is preventing the deaths of kittens yet to be born and the adult cats that are already here and waiting for homes in thousands of shelters across the country. What TNR does is save money – for the caretakers who can have their cat food bill cut in half after spay/neuter, for the shelters who spend so many resources every “kitten season”, for animal control who has the emotional cost as well as the financial and for the taxpayers who need to see their tax dollars spent more wisely. TNR saves lives – the kittens that can be adopted where there is space, the increased health of the colonies following TNR and the reduction of cats coming into shelters and animal control. We need to reach out to all KHCLs, educate them in the ways of TNR. TNR can require the hard choice to leave kittens where they are – if they are already too feral to be turned tame quickly, better to neuter and leave them, care for them with good food and shelter, than to have them be semi-feral, unhappy cats in a shelter. Many ferals, once they are no longer influenced by hormones, become very friendly and affectionate and may choose to become indoor cats.

Adoption “Options”

I need to mention on-line adoptions. Many people, unable to get cats/kittens into shelters, have turned to advertising them online. While it is preferable to have the cats adopted out by a shelter who will always accept them back if the adoptive family has to give up the animal, sometimes it isn’t possible and many people adopt the cats out themselves. Many shelters have their applications posted on their own website. Use the forms, ask the questions. They should always charge an adoption fee. There are unscrupulous, horrible people out there who are the complete opposite of KHCLs and they can be crafty. Also, people do not always respect and care for that which they have gotten for “free.” In addition, just as a shelter would make sure that the cats are up-to-date on vaccinations and have been neutered, so should a private adopter.

541

As I am writing this, our number of cats for the calendar year is 541. In all of last year, we processed 525. We are 3 months ahead of last year in number of cats and may hit the 700 mark for the year if we keep going like we have been.

We have only been able to do this thru the help of our volunteers and the many generous donations we have received.

Please help us hit that 700 mark. If you can work volunteering into your schedule – trapping in your neighborhood, speaking with your elected officials, attending or helping at one of our events, fostering friendlies or injured cats, transporting cats or donations, please contact us.

Please continue to make monetary and in-kind donations – PayPal makes it very easy and if you have supplies that we can use, give us a call. Our cost for each feral is $30 and your $30 donation is an investment in reduced cat over-population!

It is only thru your support that we can continue to meet our goals!

It has been two whole years since Feral Fixers has been incorporated!

So much has happened!

We have spayed/neutered over 1200 cats in this time, mostly feral, some friendly. We have assisted caretakers from Aurora to Berkeley, from Elk Grove Village to Darien. We have seen our numbers go from being ecstatic at having done 30 cats in a month, to doing 80 or more during most months.

We have made great contacts that will support us from this point on – shelters, police departments, politicians, businesses and all the caretakers who care so much for their feral cats.

When we first started, we had to explain over and over just what TNR was. Now the question is where and when! The public already knows what TNR is, and want to get on to doing it! And it is so great to hear, “oh, yes, I already did my outside cats, they are so happy!

Before Feral Fixers, it was just me, thru word of mouth people heard that I did TNR and I was plenty busy, felt I was changing the world, a few cats here and there. Now, with the help of Feral Fixers’ volunteers and the backing of a solid 501(c) 3, so much more can be done and we really are changing the world for cats! We are still mostly word of mouth. We have our business cards sprinkled around and we do events, but we cannot advertise – we are overwhelmed with calls right now, I could not even imagine the volume from actual advertising.

We have many roadblocks, now and coming in the future. The growing need as more people contact us could bring us to the point where a great many organizations go belly-up and we need your help to keep that from happening.

We need more volunteers – the risk of our core group burning out is great. We all tend to do too much and get sick and then feel further behind. As word of our organization spreads, our volunteer base must increase to handle the increased numbers of cats.

We need people to do transport with large vehicles – vehicles that can hold 15 to 20 cats in traps for the long trip to PAWS.

We need a low-cost spay/neuter clinic in the suburbs that can match PAWS fees. PAWS is doing so much – surgeries for owned pets in Chicago and surrounding areas, rescued cats and dogs from shelters who cannot afford the fees at local vets and ferals for all the people in the area who are taking up the practice of TNR! While PAWS can do up to 100 surgeries in a day, there are limits of how many animals we can get into PAWS due to the volume of all the animals that need to be done. We need comparable low-cost spay/neuter for ferals in the suburbs!

We need more people to talk to their neighbors - nothing is as disheartening as having a colony TNR’d and a neighbor calls and complains about the cats – after that happens it can be too late to mitigate the impact if there is no pro-TNR ordinance in place. If caretakers will talk to their neighbors, we can suggest ways to keep the cats out of neighbor’s yards but the first step is always TNR. If you are going to care for feral cats, you must be a good neighbor first and foremost.

I have always found that one must ask for what one needs – there are very few mind readers! So, please, volunteer for us in one of the many ways that can help and talk about TNR and feral cats. We have done so much and we can do so much more with your help!

October 16th is National Feral Cat Day. Please take a moment to think about the improvements all over the country that have been made for feral cats. Ferals truly are everywhere in the United States and so many cat lovers are stepping forward and speaking out for the ferals, no longer resigned to letting others decide the fate of these cats who are outside thru no fault of their own, reproducing endlessly, cats that used be automatically trapped and euthanized. Almost every day we hear, “thank you so much for what you do, I am so glad you are here.

I am already looking forward to National Feral Cat Day 2010 to see what achievements we can report from our third year!

Thank you all so much!

Tammy