Feral Cat’s Life Far From Purrfection, Rescuers Warn Students, Tourists

Ginger was a pitiful creature when Joan Ziemba caught sight of her behind the college fieldhouse.

Bone-thin and ragged, the little cat had probably spent two months in the woods, says Ziemba, an administrator at George Mason University.

Dozens of cats are “set free” at the end of each semester at the sprawling campus of 24,000 students in the Washington suburbs. Some animals die. A lucky few find new owners.

The rest join proliferating colonies of semi-wild cats that inhabit the woods around campus buildings.

“College campuses across the nation have this problem,” says Ziemba, who with other cat lovers has formed a feeding and rescue program at George Mason.

“The kids think it would be a neat idea to have a pet during the year, and then there is nowhere for the pet to go when classes end,” Ziemba says. “They think the cats will do fine outdoors.”

Alley cats are ubiquitous in big cities, and the neighborhood stray is a common sight elsewhere. But animal welfare workers say problems such as George Mason’s can be easy to overlook.

“People probably are surprised to learn there are colonies of feral animals living in places like college campuses and summer resort communities,” says Stephen Zawistowski, vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Feral animals are domesticated animals living in the wild. Estimates of the number of feral or stray cats nationally range from 30 million to 60 million, but no one really knows the extent of the population, says Becky Robinson, director of a clearinghouse called Alley Cat Allies.

Feral cats are in danger from starvation, cold, disease, cars, other animals and one another. Left alone, cats become territorial and fight frequently.

While many of the feral cats were former pets, most were born wild. Feral cats breed quickly. A female can produce two to three litters annually, and an average of 2.8 kittens per litter survive to reproduce. Two freely breeding cats can be responsible for about 70 animals in one year, as offspring breed and then those offspring breed again.

The feral cats also harbor diseases such as rabies and distemper. Feline leukemia and an immune disease similar to AIDS are incurable and highly communicable.

Americans kept about 63 million cats as pets last year, and about 58 million dogs.

Students or people who get jobs at summer resorts and leave their pets when it’s time to go often have a misguided notion about the cats’ abilities to adapt to the wild, Zawistowski and others say.

“A lot of people don’t see it as abandoning the animal,” Ziemba says. “They think they’re giving the cat its freedom.”

An estimated 200 feral cats roam the 670-acre George Mason campus, eating handouts, rodents and garbage. Ziemba’s group, the Mason Cat Coalition, traps the animals and has them spayed or neutered.

Friendly animals like Ginger can be adopted. But cats born in the wild are usually too afraid of people to make good pets. Animals that can’t be tamed are released.

Ginger, now gaining weight and recovered from an eye infection, has found a comfortable home with another university employee.

“She’s a little skittish still,” says the new owner, Laura Massie. “I don’t know what happened to her when she was in the wild, but she was traumatized.”

The Mason Cat Coalition was modeled on a program founded eight years ago at Stanford University. The Stanford Cat Network has helped reduce the campus feral cat population from about 500 to about 150, says founder Carole Hyde.

“It was formed in response to the university’s desire to round up and exterminate these cats,” she says.

Since then, Hyde’s group has helped set up cat management programs at about a dozen other campuses nationwide. The groups aim to reduce the population through sterilization and adoption, and improve the health of the inevitable remaining feral animals.

Long-term management is cheaper and more effective than killing unwanted animals, advocates say.

“What’s happened at Stanford is proof of that,” Robinson says. “Killing animals just creates a vacuum effect for other animals to move in and begin the cycle again.”

Education is also key to breaking the cycle of abandoned animals on campus, Ziemba says.

“It seems just so completely irresponsible to think of an animal as disposable, but of course people do think that way,” she says. “We want to help students understand that cats are not disposable, and that setting an animal free is not doing anyone any favors.”