Listen as Providence Journal staff writer Benjamin Gedan narrates a slideshow about feral cats. |
Feral cats "are reservoirs of disease that they bring to your doorstep ... Someone has to do something to control this problem."
WARWICK -- In backyards and alleyways, they are shooed away with a hiss or a bucket of cold water. Thousands are captured and put down every year. Their colonies, clustered at Dumpsters, are deplored as havens for disease.
But you wouldn't know it inside the Rhode Island Animal Medical Center, a private facility turned over every other Sunday to the nonprofit group PawsWatch, where the most fortunate of the state's feral cats receive medical treatment rivaling human health care.
It is not a spa, and the wild cats come for sterilization, not a massage and facial. But compared with the mean streets, this is kitty heaven.
On a recent Sunday, feline patients lay on heated operating tables, receiving anesthesia from a surgery technician and being spayed or neutered by a licensed veterinarian. Trapped and transported by volunteers, they received vaccines, antibiotics and dental and medical procedures that would cost a pet owner up to $2,000.
"We all love animals," said Patricia Munafo, who manages the clinic for Newport-based PawsWatch. "We do everything we can."
The twice-a-month clinic, by far the largest of its kind in Rhode Island, spays and neuters 1,000 cats a year. But it is only a small front in the losing battle to contain the state's feral and stray cat population. Nobody knows for sure how many strays there are in Rhode Island, but it's in the thousands and growing.
Efforts to reduce the number of wild cats in Rhode Island are largely uncoordinated -- in part the result of conflicting agendas and mistrust among the various groups dedicated to animal welfare. Yearly campaigns to enact a statewide legislative solution have foundered, exposing fissures within the community of policymakers, animal-control officers, animal-welfare advocates and veterinarians.
"Traditionally, they don't work that well together," says Dr. Christopher H. Hannafin, the official state veterinarian at the Department of Environmental Management.
In the fractious world of animal advocacy, the groups do agree on one thing: that the feral cat population is out of control. But animal advocates have only recently taken steps to form a coalition, and the years of leadership and legislative void have left urban streets teeming with alley cats.
The problem worsens daily. A female cat can start reproducing at five months old and can bear three litters a year with as many as six kittens each.
That has left animal-control officers overwhelmed and turned animal-shelter managers into frequent executioners. From 2002 to 2004, the 39 municipal pounds and eight private shelters in Rhode Island euthanized at least 6,850 cats, according to the DEM. In Warwick alone, the number of cats euthanized annually has doubled in the past five years. Last year, the city put down 124 of the 412 cats it sheltered, said Ann Corvin, the Animal Shelter director.
"They are reservoirs of disease that they bring to your doorstep," says Dr. E.J. Finocchio, director of the Rhode Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "It's a serious situation, and someone has to do something to control this problem."
NATIONWIDE, there are an estimated 73 million cats kept as pets and a similar number living outdoors. Captured stray cats -- runaway or abandoned household pets -- are occasionally adopted from local pounds, but their wild offspring, classified as feral cats, are typically shy around humans and poor candidates for adoption. In the wild, the yowling females are nearly always pregnant, and unaltered tomcats roam a city, displaying violent and antisocial behavior and urinating to mark their territory. Many are infested with fleas, malnourished and injured from fights.
Several cities have taken drastic and controversial steps to reduce their homeless cat populations. Last October, the Pawtucket City Council passed a law prohibiting the feeding of wild cats, a policy many animal-rights advocates deplored as cruel and unnecessary. Residents caught slipping scraps to an alley cat face a potential $50 fine.
In December, the Warwick City Council approved a law requiring all cat owners to spay or neuter their pets by the age of six months or be subject to a $100 monthly fine. Pet owners who want to keep their cats unaltered must pay a $100 annual fee for every unaltered pet. Only licensed cat breeders are exempt from the law, which is based on an ordinance in East Providence.
"When people move away, they just let the cats go and they reproduce," Donna M. Travis, a Warwick City Council member who sponsored the ordinance, said. "The kittens out there are dying, and they are a nuisance."
Last month, Sen. John J. Tassoni Jr., D-Smithfield, filed a bill in the General Assembly that he says would make Rhode Island the first state in the country to enact a mandatory spay/neuter law. Under the bill, it would cost $100 to harbor a fertile feline, and the failure to comply could bring a $100 monthly fine.
"We're such a small state. This is a piece of legislation that could work," said Tassoni, who described feral cats as coyote food and blamed them for spreading rabies and Lyme disease and causing a general nuisance. "We need to get this under control."
Defenders of Animals, based in Providence, is planning a rally in support of the bill on Wednesday in the State House rotunda. Volunteers will display a paper chain with a link for each of the 2,141 cats put down last year in Rhode Island, according to Dennis Tabella, the group's director.
"That's a lot for a small state," said Tabella, who said the law could reduce euthanasia at municipal shelters by up to 65 percent. "This bill would go a long way to cut down the amount of cats that are being put to sleep every year."
But, like the Pawtucket feeding ban, this proposed law has come under fire from PawsWatch and other promoters of animal welfare. They say it would encourage low-income pet owners to drop off cats at the pound or simply abandon them because they can't afford a spay or neuter procedure. The result, they say, would be an increase in strays.
Spaying a cat can cost as much as $225, and if a veterinarian should find distemper, intestinal parasites or some other health problem, the bill could skyrocket.
Neutering is a form of birth control that involves the removal of a male cat's reproductive organs; a spayed female cat has typically had her uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes taken out.
Jessica Frohman, program manager for Alley Cat Allies, a nonprofit group based in Bethesda, Md., said mandatory sterilization laws are impossible to enforce and should never precede the establishment of low-cost spay/neuter clinics.
"People want to do it," Frohman said. "They just can't afford the price."
Two weeks after Tassoni filed his bill, Rep. Peter G. Palumbo, D- Cranston, and Rep. Robert E. Flaherty, D-Warwick, proposed legislation to create a state fund to subsidize spay/neuter clinics. The bill would create a check-off box on state income tax forms to raise money for the fund, which would be controlled by a board including Finocchio or his designee.
NEW HAMPSHIRE passed a similar law in 1993, providing money for a network of private veterinarians to perform low-cost spaying and neutering. Euthanasia has since dropped by 75 percent, according to Peter Marsh, director of STOP, Solutions to Overpopulation of Pets, the Concord, N.H., nonprofit group that helped create the law.
Twenty-three states have special license plates that raise money for spay/neuter clinics. In Illinois, a state law approved last August raises $2 million a year for clinics from pet-licensing fees, Marsh said. In all, about 30 states, including Maine and Vermont, raise money in some way to offer low-cost clinics.
In Rhode Island, however, a four-year effort by the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to create a similar fund has faltered, in part because of disputes over who would control the money as well as concerns among some veterinarians about a potential loss of business. On Thursday, a separate bill was filed to create a similar fund but altering the board that would disburse the money.
Dr. Courtney Rebensdorf, president of the Rhode Island Veterinary Medical Association, has also questioned the push for state-supported low-cost spay/neuter clinics, saying the association already offers affordable services for low-income pet owners, who are charged half the going rate for the procedures.
Also, Friends of Animals, in Darien, Conn., provides coupons for pet owners for discounted spay/neuter services at certain veterinarians. And, a handful of independent veterinarians also offer a similar service.
Low-cost clinics, Rebensdorf said, deprive pet owners of the guidance offered by a private veterinarian, who teaches pet owners proper cat nutrition and provides preventive care.
"We want to be able to diagnose and treat and prevent health problems before they become life threatening," Rebensdorf said. "If you're just dropping your pet off for a low-cost spay and neuter, it's not ideal."
Even promoters of the universal spay/neuter bill and the state fund for subsidizing the procedures acknowledge that the legislation would not completely solve the alley-cat problem. Existing colonies, they say, would continue to flourish, despite the scarcity of food, the region's harsh winters and the dangers of living in the wild.
Groups such as PawsWatch have stepped into the breach to help street cats live happy, sterile lives. Relying primarily on volunteers and donations, PawsWatch is following the so-called trap-neuter-return strategy that is popular in several large communities, including New York City, where the group Neighborhood Cats has promoted the method since 1999. In New Britain, Conn., city officials recently began subsidizing programs using that strategy, and advocates say other local governments could soon follow suit.
In its literature, PawsWatch takes pains not to demonize feral cats as meddlesome disease carriers, saying the animals it rescues are hardluck critters condemned to reproduce "in starvation and squalor and facing poisoning or mass roundup for death."
In trap-neuter-return, volunteers attempt to capture an entire colony of homeless cats, provide spay/neuter services and return the animals to their old haunts, where they are monitored by neighborhood animal lovers who provide food. The goal is to improve the lives of the feral cats while guaranteeing that the colony gradually dies off.
Feral cats are a serious problem, says Finocchio, and PawsWatch is the only group "stepping up to the plate."
PawsWatch President Kathy MacPherson says the group provides an invaluable service to local governments, humanely treating wild cats while gradually eliminating the colonies. The trap-neuter-return approach is non-lethal, but it does control the feral cat population, its supporters say. Eventually, "we want to be put out of business," Munafo, the PawsWatch clinic manager, put it.
Some veterinarians, however, do not favor trap-neuter-return initiatives.
The American Veterinary Medical Association has expressed concern that feral cats pose a danger to small songbirds, rabbits and mice. The wild cats also pose a public health risk, the association says, particularly if groups returning cats to the wild do not provide regular checkups for the cats or administer a second rabies vaccine a year after the first.
"High-quality care is important," Rebensdorf said. "If you're going to have managed colonies, it has to be done responsibly."
Despite the frequent disagreements, there appears to be a détente in the works among animal-welfare groups and veterinarians. MacPherson said an alliance is being formed to lobby and raise money for low-cost spay/neuter clinics. And Rebensdorf said a recent grant from the Rhode Island Foundation will help veterinarian and shelter administrators improve communication.
Last year, animal-rights activists got the General Assembly to ban gas chambers in municipal animal shelters; since August, all euthanasia has involved lethal injection.
The new coalitions, however, have only recently began to meet, and in the interim, homeless cats have been busy breeding.
"Every year it goes up. It's ridiculous," said Corvin, who runs the Warwick Animal Shelter. "They're everywhere."
bgedan@projo.com / (401) 277-8072
