Neuter-release was the third most popular rescue activity in both surveys, following homeless cat adoption and cat-feeding. In 1992, 14 rescuers had neutered and released 120 homeless cats, for an average of 8.6 apiece. In the interim between the surveys, 17 rescuers neutered and released 77 cats, an average of 4.5 apieceand one individual, who had neutered and released 50 cats prior to the 1992 survey, reported neutering and releasing 900 between the surveys, including about 400 males and 500 females, of whom 400 total were still alive. This level of activity was so intense that this indivi-dual's data had to be dropped from the tabulations to make sense of the rest.
As anticipated from study results showing that neutering adds from 20% to 50% to the life expectancy of owned cats, homeless cats seem to live far longer when neutered and therefore not obliged to take risks in search of mates or to get food for kittens. Among the cats neutered and released by the 12 normal-volume neuter/release practitioners during the interim between the 1992 and 1995 surveys, 28 of 39 males (71%) were still alive at the 1995 survey date, of whom 86% had lived at least two years after release; 48 of 56 females (86%) were still alive, of whom 83% had lived at least two years after release. Assuming that the average age of the cats who were neutered and released was one year, 71% of males and 86% of females had already lived longer than all but 17% of the 147 males and 22% of the 173 homeless females picked up during the1991-1992 demonstration neuter/release demonstration project.
ANIMAL PEOPLE also asked respondants in 1995 about the fate of cats they neutered and released before July 1992. Of 120 such cats, the fates of 95 (79%) were known. Thirty-four of 42 males were still alive (81%), as were 42 of 53 females (79%).
In fact, cats involved in the 1995 survey respondants' neuter/release projects seem to be living longer than owned cats: of 287 living owned cats reported in a separate survey of Animals' Agenda readers that Clifton did in 1991, just 64% had lived three years or longer, and only 56% had lived four years or longer. Only time will tell whether the neutered and released cats will match the other longevity marks found in the 1991 survey: 19% had lived 10 years or longer, and 11% had lived 12 years or longer, while 3% had lived 17 years or longer.
Cats vs. wildlife
The dramatically increased longevity of homeless cats after neutering suggests that conflicts with conservationists over feline predation on songbirds and other wildlife will only increase, unless both neuter/release practitioners and conservationists get together to establish mutually acceptable criteria for where, when, and how neuter/release should be practiced. From 1992 survey data and personal observation during the 1991-1992 neuter/release demonstration project, Clifton and Bartlett determined that only about 12% of the locations where homeless cats are found are actually suitable sites for maintaining cat colonies. Our position throughout has also been that all homeless cats should be removed from unsuitable habitat as expeditiously as possible, and that the ultimate goal should be no homeless cats, period.
This position is not inconsistent with the goals of such organizations as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the National Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, and the California Coastal Conservancy, among many others which oppose the presence of feral cats in wildlife habitat. ANIMAL PEOPLE parts company with these organizations, however, in that because some neuter/release practitioners persist in maintaining colonies at inappropriate sites, they tend to oppose all use of neuter/release. Our argument is that because catch-and-kill is manifestly unpopular with much of the public, as well as within the cat rescuing community, and because catch-and-kill policies demonstrably discourage cooperation between rescuers and people concerned with wildlife protection, it is wiser for all concerned to cooperate in alternatives including neuter/release which recognize and respect the importance of saving the lives of the cats to rescuers. In the long run, we contend, it is more beneficial to wildlife to have the numbers of feral cats controlled and their locations regulated, than to have unknown numbers reproducing at an unknown rate in unknown locations, paying people to exterminate them while people who might be voluntarily capturing them, socializing the socializable for adoption, and neutering the lot are deterred by threats of fines and jail time.
On July 5, 1994, ANIMAL PEOPLE proposed to 16 organizations and individual researchers with a strong interest in homeless cats and the impact of cats on wildlife that resources could be combined to compare the population records of closely monitored cat colonies with Audobon Christmas Bird Count and Breeding Bird Survey data from nearby locations to definitively measure the effects of cats vs. birds. We pointed out that the limited data to date from other studies indicates a variety of possibilities, depending upon the type of habitat.
Beyond the obvious, that cats eat birds when they can, further issues must be considered. For instance, some of the data most strongly indicting cats for killing birds also indicates that they kill primarily small ground-feeding species, and that their most frequent prey by an overwhelming margin is the English house sparrow, a non-native species in North America which competes with scarcer native species for food and habitat. Since most of the fast-declining neotropical migratory songbirds are not ground-feeders, it may be that homeless cats have much less to do with their decline than is often postulated, and may even be helping them by knocking off some of their competition.
Also worth a closer look is the relationship between homeless cats and raptors. Do cats outcompete hawks and owls for prey in suburban environments, or do they merely occupy niches that raptors have abandoned due to loss of nesting habitat? And are homeless cats perhaps important prey for some of the larger raptors when they reoccupy habitat?
Certainly homeless cats are believed to be an important food source for suburban coyotes. Would the elimination of homeless cats decrease conflicts between humans and coyotes, or would hungry coyotes become more aggressive about foraging in yards?
Researchers Andrew Rowan of the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy and James Serpell, who holds the Marie Moore Chair for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, were intensely interested. But, though the proposal has been twice recirculated, none of the groups contacted have bothered to reply, and no one has offered funding.
Until such a study is done, the complexity of the relationship between homeless cats and wildlife is likely to be left out of the increasingly rancorous debate between conservationists and neuter/release practitioners, to the detriment of all concerned.
Feeding sites
In 1992, 26 (74%) of the cat-feeding respondants reported feeding homeless cats on their doorstep; 12 (34%) fed homeless cats at a public building; six each fed homeless cats in an alley or in a wooded area; and four each fed homeless cats at a shopping center, in a barn, or at work.
In 1995, 21 (60%) of the cat-feeding respondants reported feeding homeless cats on their doorstep, and the average number of cats fed on a doorstep had declined from 4.5 to 2.5. Five each fed homeless cats in wooded areas and in barns; four each fed homeless cats at work or in an alley; only two people were still feeding cats at public buildings; only one was still feeding cats at a shopping center; and four were feeding homeless cats in parks or other public-access wildlife areas, up from zero in 1992 and a clear warning of further conflict ahead.
Except for the emergence of cat-feeding in wildlife areas, the trend seems to be toward markedly reducing the numbers of cats in the locations of the most contact with humans, such as doorsteps, public buildings, and workplaces, while the numbers found in rural locations, i.e. barns, wooded areas, and wildlife areas, are up 10%.
As of 1992, of the 393 cats fed in identified locations, 30% were fed on doorsteps; 22% were fed at public buildings; 20% were fed in barns; 10% were fed in wooded areas; 7% were fed at work; 5% were fed in alleys; 2% were fed at shopping centers; and 4% were fed at other sites.
By 1995, of the 435 cats fed in identified locations, 20% were fed on doorsteps; 18% were fed in wooded areas; 9% were fed in barns; 6% were fed in public-access wildlife areas; 5% were fed at shopping centers; 4% were fed at work; and 3% each were fed at public buildings, in alleys, or at other sites.
Placing cats
The 1995 survey of cat rescuers also asked about experience in adopting out formerly homeless cats. Seventeen respondants had adopted out 70 homeless cats among them, between 1992 and 1995, while another respondant adopted out 165.
Those who completed the portion of the form asking about the success of adoptions indicated that 11 males and seven females had remained in adoptive homes since 1992; nine males and six females had remained in adoptive homes since 1993; and 10 males and six females had remained in adoptive homes since 1994.
The data is insufficient to determine the percentage of rescuers' adoptions that succeed, but does indicate a consistent bias among adoptors toward male cats. The cost of neutering may be a factor, as could be the sex ratio of homeless cats. The ANIMAL PEOPLE neuter/release demonstration project data found that female kittens outnumbered males two-to-one, but the sex ratio was equal from puberty to age three, and among cats older than three, males outnumbered females by a three-to-two ratio. This is almost the opposite of the sex ratio Johnson and Lewellen found among owned cats older than five in San Diego County. If kitten births among the homeless cat populations with which the survey respondants work are being prevented at a significant rate, the homeless female population is perhaps no longer being replenished in those areas at a high enough rate to maintain the overall ratio of 46% male, 54% female among homeless cats that ANIMAL PEOPLE discovered (and that the Feral Cat Coalition data from San Diego confirms) as the normal ratio.
On the other hand, if kitten births are being prevented but females are still dying at a greater rate than males, some factor other than those associated with kitten-rearing must account for the greater female mortality. Since such a factor is not apparent, and since indications are that homeless kitten births overall are still occurring at about the 1992 level, the cost of neutering would appear to be the major and perhaps only reason for adoptors' preference of male cats.
The respondant adopting out formerly homeless cats in high volume could have skewed the results all by herself if her responses hadn't been tallied separately. She acknowledged making a deliberate effort to place female cats. Of 120 females she placed in homes between 1992 and 1995, she claimed 117 (98%) were still in their adoptive homes as of the survey date, along with 44 of 45 males (also 98%). Even if this respondant overestimates the success of placements by 15% to 20%, her placement success would compare well to the average among animal shelters that keep comparable records.
Steep drop
There is a noteworthy exception to the observation that homeless kitten births are holding steady: there seems to have been a steep drop in the number of kittens born in locations monitored by neuter/release practitioners. The peak year for neutering and releasing homeless cats was 1993. Of the 77 cats who were neutered and released between 1992 and 1995 by survey respondants, only 12 (16%) were neutered and released during 1994 and the first half of 1995. Another way to phrase this is that 84% of the cats neutered and released by the 1995 survey respondents during the preceding three years were actually neutered and released during the first 18 months of the survey period, covering just one spring "kitten season." Thereafter, either the neuter/release practioners burned out on the techniquewhich was not apparent from the responses to any of the other questions, nor from written commentsor neuter/ release was phenomenally effective in preventing colony growth in the neuter/release practitioners' areas of activity.
Shelters
The fourth most popular rescue option in both 1992 and 1995 was taking cats to animal shelters. Thirteen respondents (30%) were taking homeless cats to animal shelters in 1992; by 1995, 12 were (27%). Of the 12, one reported taking 60 cats to shelters during the previous three years. In 1992, no one rescuer reported taking exceptional numbers of cats to shelters, but the rescuers who did take some cats to shelters reported having taken an average of 7.5 cats apiece. From 1992 to 1995, rescuersother than the individual who took 60 cats to shelterstook an average of 3.8 cats apieceabout three a year, a hint that the number of homeless cats at large may be indeed be dropping.
Capturing homeless cats for euthanasia was not particularly popular in 1992, as only nine respondants reported ever doing it. Only one had captured more than 20 cats for euthanasia. Between 1992 and 1995, only five rescuers reported capturing homeless cats for euthanasia; none reported capturing more than four to be euthanized, and no one cited any reason for euthanasia other than terminal illness or injury.
The decline in capturing for euthanasia did not appear in mortality counts.
Mortality
Respondents were personally aware of the deaths of 228 homeless cats prior to the 1992 survey: 29% roadkills, 18% humanely euthanized, 16% victims of upper respiratory infections, 13% victims of other illnesses (10 of 29 from feline leukemia), 8% killed by nuisance trappers, 6% poisoned, 6% killed by sadists, 4% dead of unknown causes, 3% starved (apparently orphaned kittens), and 0.4% killed by fur trappers.
Between 1992 and 1995, respondants became personally aware of the deaths of another 133 homeless cats: 26% roadkills, 22% humanely euthanized, 11% dead of unknown causes, 9% dead of upper respiratory infections, 8% dead of other illnesses (four of seven from feline leukemia), 6% killed by nuisance trappers, 6% killed by dogs, 3% killed by wild predators, none starved, none poisoned, and none killed by fur trappers.
Allowing for the small size of the sample, there seems to be no significant change in the causes of mortality among homeless cats, even with the greater longevity of those in neuter/release programs. Somewhere between 25% and 33% of homeless cats are apparently killed by cars, about a third are killed to get rid of them, and about 33% to 40% die from other causes.
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