The coyotes love them here.
There is no need to help them. Feral cats perform a function on farms, etc., keeping the rodent population down. They take care of themselves.
I’ve been feeding scraps to our local feral feline. I’m a little mad at it right now, it killed our garden bullfrog friend.
Time for Obama to appoint a feral cat czar.
Since my next door neighbors have not neutered their male cat, we suffer a huge ferral cat population in my neighborhood.
I have been cage trapping them and calling the city animal control to pick them up.
Irresponsible cat owners are to blame for this mess.
We are rescuers also and have taken good care of many over the years. We are also involved in dog rescues.
I know of at least 2 organizations just in one small community near me that works on trapping and spaying and neutering the feral cats. The woman who runs one lives across the road from me. Between us we have about 25 of them at any given time.
I currently have 11, but 3 of them are spoken for and will be going to their new homes within the next week or so.
Ping a ling!!!!!
“Ahhhhhhh! I love free-range!”
A few years ago, there appeared a plague of pigeons in our area. It was starting to look the “The Birds”. Over time, however, the number of feral cats increased as did the number of random piles of pigeon feathers. Now we seem to have reached a balance with only a few pigeons in the neighborhood.
I believe a good answer would be a drug - embedded in food that would chemically sterilize them (either male or female or both)... Then allow them to continue compete in their local semi-wild environment for food and territory... helping to keep the population in check via food competition. This would greatly reduce the population of feral cats over 5 to 10 years... There are problems with this idea - but the problems could be worked out...
As a side note — I have had two cats father and daughter) who displayed feral behavior - even though both had been totally domestic and pampered all their lives from the time they were born ... Yet they displayed the wariness and suspicion of humans to the extreme just as feral cats do. They were not necessarily mean but could not be handled... I have had many cats over the years - observed and adopted quite a few feral cats - so I know the difference in behavior... The daughter is still alive and she bobs and weaves when I attempt to touch her and nips my hand... Many cats display some of this behavior but not to this extreme.... I believe feral behavior is largely due to a gene that gets turned on when the cats encounters dire conditions of survival. And may accidentally get turned on due to an unknown condition or set of conditions.
I trapped and spayed/vaccinated two feral cats who had set up housekeeping in my barn and had kittens. I captured and took the kittens, kept three, all spay/neutered, and their mothers too, are still around. I provide a safe place for them and good food. It’s probably still a harder, shorter life than a domestic cat, but we do the best we can. By spaying them and releasing them back, they keep the mice down without overpopulating us with cats.
My 15 pound, 10 year old cat that we got as a freebie kitten in the lobby of Wall Mart just brought me a chipmunk.
The single best thing you can do for feral cats is rescue a couple of their kittens - when they are young enough to be socialized. I did. I adopted two sisters and they are 5 now and still the sweetest, adoring and most gentle creatures on God’s Great earth.