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Help me, I’ve got feral cats living in my backyard! Help, a feral mother gives birth every few months under my stoop and she’s pregnant AGAIN! Help, my woods are simply filled with feral cats and I’m worried about them being eaten or dying...
We get email like this every day. Feral cats, or unsocialized cats who live outdoors and are not friendly to humans, are a huge problem not only in New York City, but throughout the country and even the world.
KittyKind does not take in feral cats. They would be unadoptable and would be miserable living indoors. The best thing to do with feral cats is to trap them, have them sterilized, and return them to their familiar territory, where you and your neighbors can feed them, something called TNR (trap, neuter, return).
There is no one who will come out and "take care" of the problem for you. It is too labor intensive and there are too many of them! If the cats are in your backyard, who better than you to deal with the situation? You know the cats’ schedule better than anyone, and you can gain access to your own yard at any time. Yes, it will take effort, some education, and some money. But the situation will be MUCH better within a short period of time — did you know that even ONE unspayed female can produce 600,000 cats in only seven years? So by getting even one female fixed, you are preventing thousands of unwanted litters!
Once you get your "colony" under control by trapping and fixing the cats and returning them to their familiar territory where you and your neighbors can take care of them, you will have natural rodent control, and the cats will defend their territory from other strays, keeping the stray numbers down. Getting "rid" of the strays doesn’t work — they just get replaced by others in the neighborhood! "Starving" them actually makes them breed MORE — it’s nature’s way of keeping the population going.
The ASPCA and New York City Animal Care and Control offer low cost or free neutering for ferals. Check out their Web sites or call them for details.
Alley Cat Allies and Neighborhood Cats are groups dedicated to helping control feral populations. Check out their sites for more information.
Good luck!
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