Fur Flies Over Controversial Proposals to Curb Colonies of Stray Cats

Until the law caught up with them, the 20 stray cats of Riverside Park led a charmed existence.

The portly tabbies spent their days wandering sun-dappled bike trails and lolling on the rocks overlooking the Potomac River. Dinner came on schedule every day, a huge mound of cat chow toted in by feline-fancying neighbors of this leafy National Park Service land south of Washington, D.C.

The lucky creatures belonged to a managed colony, an outdoor welfare plan for abandoned cats, underwritten by devoted volunteers. Such colonies, consisting of six to 100 cats, are rapidly spreading across the United States. California alone has more than 100 of them.

In some circles, however, they’re wearing out their welcome. With increasing frequency, bird lovers and other conservationists resist locating cat colonies in parks, on beaches and in other natural areas.

“Someone has to take responsibility,” said Louise Holton, who three years ago helped found Alley Cat Allies, the national feral cat network, based in Mt.Rainier, Md. “There are 60 million abandoned cats out there.”

But Peter Stangel, program director of the Neotropical Migratory Bird Institute, said: “Cats are really ferocious predators. They should be kept inside. Colonies of cats should be removed.”

Using a concept developed 20 years ago in England, the network teaches cat lovers how to manage colonies of feral animals.

Self-appointed caretakers feed and water the cats daily and see to their health needs. Every cat that can be trapped is vaccinated and sterilized. The volunteers usually pay all the bills, sometimes for as many as 150 cats.

Caretakers rescue unwanted cats from the short, brutish lives that strays customarily lead and save them from a one-way trip to an animal shelter. About 6 million unwanted cats are euthanized in the United States each year.

The rescuers often move cats into natural areas to isolate them from cars and human cat-abusers. That puts concentrations of the animals close to birds and other vulnerable wildlife. Conservationists are particularly concerned about threatened or endangered songbirds.

Research supports their point. Feral cats have nearly wiped out parrot populations on some Caribbean islands. One study in Britain estimated that the country’s 5 million house cats kill 70 million small animals each year, including 20 million birds.

A recent study of radio-collared farm cats in Wisconsin estimated that free-ranging cats kill 19 million songbirds and 140,000 game birds in the state each year.

Feral cats also threaten reptiles. They have reduced the density of ground lizards in the desert parks near Tucson, Ariz., and eradicated generations of young marine lizards on at least one island in the Galapagos archipelago off Ecuador.

Colonies intensify the problem. “What you get is a dense pack of predators,” said Ron Jurek, an endangered-wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game. “Normally, there aren’t more than about a dozen predators per square mile.”

Caretakers insist that their well-fed cats aren’t that interested in prey. “Cats are just a scapegoat,” Holton said.

But animal behaviorists say that a cat’s brain is wired to hunt, even if its belly is full. Nor do bells and declawing reduce a cat’s efficiency, they say. The cunning hunters simply adapt to the handicaps.

Several states have tried legislation. Animal-control experts argue for licensing, mandatory sterilization and limits on the number of cats anyone can own or care for.

“We get constant complaints about cats,” said Alvina Pitches, president of the Virginia Federation of Humane Societies. “They hang around bird feeders, they yowl all night or there are just too many of them around.”

But anyone who takes on the feral cat lobby quickly learns how strong it is. One survey estimates that 15 million Americans feed 35 million feral cats.

Earlier this year, a coalition of California environmental and animal-rights groups thought it had the votes to pass a law requiring owners to sterilize all free-roaming cats.

Alley Cat Allies, which supports sterilization, originally supported the legislation. But when caretakers found that they, too, would be considered owners, they launched an emotional campaign that defeated the bill.

“These people don’t subscribe to ecology principles,” said John McCaull, California legislative director for the National Audubon Society. “But politicians see how controversial this is and say, ‘Hey, this is cats. I’ve got better things to do.’ ”

College campuses are a frequent scene of these battles. Students often abandon cats when they move on.

Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton is a case in point. With its president’s blessing, a librarian maintains a colony of 35 or more cats on the campus, even though the campus is a sanctuary for burrowing owls, the only ground-nesting owl in North America.

The number of owls has dwindled since the cats arrived, said Sheila Mahoney, a zoology professor.

So far, the cat lovers seem to have the upper hand, perhaps for the same reason that books about cats are best sellers and cat food sales outpace baby food sales. Cats are the most popular pet in the United States.

But in Riverside Park, the cats lost. Despite hate mail, letters to newspapers and threats, the National Park Service in April began trapping the animals and delivering them to the county shelter, where they face probable euthanasia.