Letter to the Editor: Vox

In response to: https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/24041534/hawaii-cats-invasive-species-extinction 

Dear Mr. Jones and Vox Editors:
I am the founder and president of Alley Cat Rescue, Inc., an international nonprofit organization that practices and promotes humane treatment of cats. I have studied and worked with feral cat colonies for over 30 years in South Africa, the U.K., and now in the U.S. I would like to offer an alternative opinion to several points you make, or present but do not dispute, in your article, “Hawaii’s out-of-control, totally bizarre fight over stray cats.” My hope is that you will be intrigued by the information offered in this letter and continue to investigate outdoor cat management with it in mind.


The feeding ban at Queen’s Marketplace is misguided legislation. It is a common misconception that most feral cats roam. In reality, a group of cats will live out their lives within a small area that they view as their home and they defend this territory, keeping other cats away.  For this reason, providing food does not attract massive amounts of new cats to a colony; populations actually increase because cats are prolific breeders and, as you highlight several times in the article, people abandon pet cats.


Despite Lepczyk’s claim that even well-fed cats hunt, it must be obvious to him and others of the same mindset that well-fed cats at least hunt less. Cats are opportunistic feeders who have learned over centuries to scavenge for their food. Any location that has dumpsters and other sources of food waste can support a colony of cats. The difference between feeding these cats and leaving them to forage through is that the latter will cause them to supplement their diet by hunting more often. 


TNR stops the breeding cycle of outdoor cats and TNR programs remove kittens from outdoor cat groups. This helps to reduce the size of colonies immediately, but of equal importance, mature and senior cats become the remaining group residents.  Cats older than six years hunt less than younger cats and pregnant and nursing cats also require more food than normal, so sterilizing cats definitely decreases hunting behavior.


Furthermore, although outdoor cats prey on grounded birds, the protection they provide for the birds’ eggs and chicks from rats must be considered. Rats destroy nests, eating eggs and fledglings. The removal of cats from islands subsequently results in the rapid increase of rat populations. Mesopredator release has provided management lessons for eradication efforts that target both an invasive apex predator and an invasive mesopredator. For example, after cats were eradicated from Macquarie Island, near Antarctica, the rat population exploded, decimating the ground-nesting bird populations.


Additionally, you present Raine’s argument that cat predation on native birds is more destructive than that of rats because rats kill eggs and chicks while cats kill adult birds too, and soon after share Jordan Lerma’s belief that “strays likely kill nēnē chicks more than adults.” Yet your own language surrounding the statements does nothing to acknowledge they contradict each other.


You write, “Then there’s this whole question of how toxoplasmosis affects human behavior…Leaning on this evidence, some ecologists in Hawaii suggest that people who manage cat colonies — who refuse to stop feeding cats — are infected by toxo, which makes them irrationally invested in caring for these animals.”


I understand this is not necessarily your opinion, but to even present it as a serious argument is insulting to cat caretakers and all community cat advocates, myself included.  The danger of cats spreading toxoplasmosis gondii is greatly overblown by anti-cat conservation groups. From https://pets.webmd.com/cats/toxoplasmosis-cats: “It is important to understand the mode of transmission from cats to understand how minimal the risk is. Even a cat with an active toxoplasmosis infection is only capable of
passing it on for seven to ten days of her entire life, when there’s an acute infection. It takes anywhere from one to three days for oocysts shed in the feces to become infectious…Then, to become infected from cat feces, a person would have to touch the feces and then touch an opening in their body.”


Your article gives voice to the opinion of Christopher Lepczyk, and a few others you name, that scientific evidence shows TNR to be an ineffective way to control outdoor cat populations. However, cat advocates’ faith in TNR does not come from wishful thinking. There are plenty of scientific studies and real-world projects that show just the opposite. A wealth of research and links to studies on the efficacy of TNR, particularly in comparison with other methods of outdoor cat population management, is available on our website at www.saveacat.org/cats-and-wildlife.html.


The final point in the article with which we take issue is the claim that outdoor cats have unpleasant and short lives. This is only true for (some) cats who do not receive a small amount of human care in the form of feeding and sterilization, such as what is provided by the caretakers your article criticizes. Sterilization in particular is key to optimizing a cat’s quality of life, whether they are a pet or feral. Neutered male cats rarely fight with one another, which spares them injury, and they roam far less, which helps them avoid falling victim to vehicles and predators. Female cats fare far better when they don’t experience the physical burdens of pregnancy and nursing.


We at Alley Cat Rescue advocate for cats because we find they are among the most misunderstood and persecuted animals. That does not mean that we don’t love and appreciate the birds and other animals that can become prey to cats. However, we recognize the difference between natural animal deaths and unnatural, preventable ones at the hands of people. Cats live and proliferate outdoors due to decades of human neglect and mismanagement. From this perspective, we’ve failed them. Surely we should embrace a way to correct our mistakes that doesn’t punish the victims.
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Sincerely,

Louise Holton