Summer McGowan
Jennifer Arasi
Lauren Buccerio
Jesse Miller
ENG 317
2/13/2019
Statement of Need
Friends of Feral Felines is a non-profit organization that tracks and cares for feral cats in Southern Maine. A feral cat is one that has lived apart from humans for so long that it cannot be socialized to humans. They have either been abandoned for a very long time or were born in the wild, making them an unfit candidate for adoption into a home. Strays and feral cats are different because strays are domesticated and have just lost their way. Feral cats have been found to live in rural areas in Southern Maine. There are many problems concerning the well-being of feral cats in these areas. These problems often occur when feral cats are not getting the proper nutrients, get ill or when they have to endure extremely harsh Maine weather. Feral cats do not have owners, as they are not pets.There are people who put out food for ferals, however. Some feral cats are lacking the care they need in order to properly survive because there are just so many of them. Friends of Feral Felines plans on using radio collars in order to better track colonies of feral cats and care for them by supplying food, TNR/vaccinations and taking in kittens in order to domesticate them. Using the collars will also allow us to learn the entire geographic range of the colonies of feral cats in order to help more cats in a smaller time frame.
According to a study done at the University of Illinois, feral, unowned cats have a much larger home range than outdoor pet cats. One male cat that was tracked had a range of 1,351 acres. Given that feral cats have such a large range, radio collars would be helpful in being able to accurately track where feral cat colonies are located in order to implement TNR. Being able to humanely reduce the number of feral cats will ultimately help cut down on overpopulation in shelters as well. Given that 50% of animals that end up in shelters are felines, and only 30% ever leave, being able to track feral cat colonies and spay and neuter them will help reduce the number of feral kittens that end up in shelters.
Feral cats are also responsible for the decline in certain wildlife populations due to predation. In fact, the domestic cat species Felis catus has contributed to the extinction of nearly 63 vertebrate species. Radio collars would allow our organization to compare feral cat ranges with local wildlife populations and put measures in place to prevent predation of species that are assumed to be impacted by the feral cats.
Radio collars would be beneficial to our organization as it would allow us to do a more thorough job at tracking and maintaining the feral cat populations in Southern Maine communities. Being able to better control these populations would help further public safety, by greatly reducing the spread of disease, giving protection for wildlife, and allowing a better quality of life to feral cats in our community.
The use of radio collars would result in TNR methods being implemented faster and more efficiently, so we can ensure all ferals in the area are spayed or neutered within a realistic and reasonable time frame. This would allow us to be able to allocate our time and resources towards helping further TNR efforts in other needy communities. The tracking capabilities of the collars would allow us to provide food and shelter at locations that would be most beneficial and well utilized by the cats of the various colonies. This would help promote their overall health and well-being, reducing the chances of them coming to peoples’ homes for food, getting into fights with their pets, and so on. Lastly, the use of radio collars will help us discover new colonies as well as the kittens that are starting to grow up in them. The earlier we can rescue kittens from these colonies, the quicker and more successfully we can socialize them to be adopted. Current TNR methods rely on luck and the idea that cats will always remain in the same area. As the world is changing, the strategies of feral cats are, too, meaning we need to update our strategies to help them. Radio collars would help us do just that.
Friends of Feral Felines aims to ultimately humanely reduce the number of feral cats in our communities and adequately support and care for those that already reside among us. This can often be a challenge to keep up with due to the high population of feral cats, and this can be truly overwhelming and a source of burnout for our staff and volunteers.By putting radio collars on adult feral cats during the TNR process, we would be contributing to this goal in both direct and indirect ways. Feral cat overpopulation is a seemingly invisible problem to many people that our organization works tirelessly to bring to light. Understanding the full geographic range of these cats and being able to track where they go will not only help us demonstrate tangible evidence of the problem, but additionally, when people see how many kittens it will allow us to save from living as a feral cat, they will truly connect with our mission and find a newfound passion for feral caretaking, TNR, and the likes within their communities.
Sources
HORN, JEFF A., et al. “Home Range, Habitat Use, and Activity Patterns of Free-Roaming Domestic Cats.” The Journal of Wildlife Management, vol. 75, no. 5, 2011, pp. 1177–1185. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41418151.
Loss
SR, Marra PP. Population impacts of free-ranging domestic cats on mainland vertebrates. 2017;15(9):502–509.
https://resources.bestfriends.org/article/save-lives-feral-freedom
