Feral feline problem now life-or-death issue

The Athens Area Humane Society will stop accepting feral cats next year, and local officials may turn to a controversial method of neutering and feeding the thousands of wild cats that roam the city.

The Humane Society told the Athens-Clarke Commission this month that, starting in July 2010, it will stop keeping feral cats in its tiny county-owned Beaverdam Road shelter and move the shelter to its more spacious clinic in Watkinsville.

The Humane Society has kept cats, rabbits and other small animals for years, while Athens-Clarke animal control officers will pick up those animals, but deal mostly with dogs and the occasional goat or chicken.

The society is backing out of its $100,000 annual contract with the county over a philosophical difference, said Executive Director Crystal Evans said. Keeping what is essentially a wild animal in a cage for five business days - the amount of time the county requires for any animal it picks up - is cruel and futile, because they rarely are adopted, Evans said.

"We would argue, for a truly feral animal, that's inhumane," she said. "These are cats that have had basically no human contact, so basically what you're doing is scaring them to death for seven days and then killing them."

The approximately 120 aggressive feral cats taken to the humane society each year occupy space that could be used for adoptable pets, forcing more cats to be euthanized and upsetting donors, Evans said. They're also a danger to employees, she said.

Athens-Clarke officials have a year to figure out how to control the feral cat population, estimated at 8,000 to 20,000. Options include expanding government-run animal control, contracting with another agency or simply doing nothing, said David Fluck, director of the Central Services Department, which oversees animal control.

If another agency is chosen to deal with feral cats, the county could turn to an organization like the Campus Cats, a volunteer group that traps feral cats, has them spayed or neutered, vaccinates them and returns them to where they were caught.

Trap-neuter-release, or TNR, now is illegal in Clarke County, but not on University of Georgia-owned land. Advocates are lobbying county commissioners to change the local law to allow it.

Mayor Heidi Davison said she would consider putting a TNR group in charge of feral cats, but said any discussion won't take place until later this year.

"It's on the back burner for the moment," Davison said, citing the county budget and other pressing issues. "I'm trying to put all the pieces together still."

More and more local governments are allowing TNR, and a few, such as Jacksonville, Fla., are turning over feral cat management to TNR groups.

TNR is a highly controversial practice among cat-lovers, though. Supporters call it a kinder alternative to capturing and killing feral cats.

"Our mission has always been to keep ferals out of the system, because we believe it is unethical to kill healthy animals," said Campus Cats coordinator Kelly Bettinger, a UGA wildlife biologist.

Critics say TNR doesn't work and its supporters are driven by emotion, not science. Many studies show that TNR does nothing to reduce feral cat populations. Not all of the cats can ever be sterilized, and even the ones that are can feast on birds and otherwise wreak havoc on the environment, said Nico Dauphine, another UGA wildlife biologist.

"There's very little or, arguably, no evidence at all that it's effective," Dauphine said. "To me, it's just a lot about people's discomfort with death and people not wanting to deal with it."

Dauphine said her yard is a wildlife habitat, and feral cats nearly wiped out all the birds that live there. They're natural predators and an invasive species, so local prey have no defense against them, she said.

Feral cats carry rabies and a parasite that can cause schizophrenia and miscarriages, veterinarian Rick Gerhold said. And feeding them, as many TNR volunteers do, attracts raccoons, which also carry rabies and other diseases, he said.

"You're going to have a lot more cats in the area, and even if they vaccinate some of them, you're still going to have a lot of them that are infected," Gerhold said.

TNR advocates, though, are armed with their own studies that say the practice is effective, safe and, of course, better for the cats than death.

"Campus is a very safe and good home for our cats," Bettinger said. "We have fat, happy cats on our campus."

Volunteers care for about 30 feral cats on campus, down from 150, Bettinger said, and want to expand beyond the Arch if county commissioners change the law so a person who feeds a cat no longer legally owns it.

TNR should be legal but not the sole means of managing feral cats, Athens-Clarke Commissioner Kelly Girtz said.

"I don't think anybody thinks of it as the silver bullet, the be-all end-all," Girtz said. "It's something that's useful, but not in all circumstances."

That view is similar to the Athens Area Humane Society's position: that TNR should be a legal option to euthanasia.

"The simple fact is neither is a perfect solution, but what we want to happen is for individuals to be able to choose," Evans said.

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