Kingston feral cat TNVR advocate: “It’s not always about the money. Sometimes it’s about how much available time you have”

Feral cat lover Heather Patterson runs For the Love of Ferals, a small organization who along with another group, Forgotten Ferals. Together they work hard to help cats in the Kingston, Ontario area. Right now Heather is worried because, despite the availability of city funding set aside for TNVR, there may not be enough people to help the cats.

feral cat
Feral cat (photo Heather Patterson)

The city prepared to approve a 2019 operating budget of $388 million Tuesday night, with $25,000 set aside to fund the program. The loss of Spay Neuter Kingston Initiative who stopped administering the TNVR program on January 1 has left those wanting to help the ferals shorthanded.

Heather stated in a February 19 interview with Whig-Standard

“It’s not always about the money. Sometimes it’s about how much available time you have. I know a lot of people are excited about this money getting approved and think it’s great news, and it is great news, but it is not good news for us.”

Heather also has the responsibility of a full-time job and says For the Love of Ferals is run by herself and a group of part-time volunteers. Last year the two groups took in 650 feral cats. Only 100 of the cats were in Kingston. There are currently too many feral cats in the area for only 100 cats being TNVR’d to make an impact with the volunteers available at this time.

feral cats
feral family (photo Heather Patterson)

The feral rescue groups all use the same veterinarian and get services at a reduced price. The vet can only do so many and the groups can’t bring in extra cats due to time constraints (for themselves as well as the vet).  Heather is hoping for a low-cost, high-volume spay and neuter clinic. And for more people willing to help since time is as much of an obstacle as money.

Right now the city has to wait on the approval of the 2019 budget before anything can be done, including who will administer the TNVR program.

Kingston, Ontario

The issue of needing a high-volume clinic that focuses on spay/neuter is common everywhere. With the low-cost initiative, many clinics are booked weeks if not months in advance.

9 thoughts on “Kingston feral cat TNVR advocate: “It’s not always about the money. Sometimes it’s about how much available time you have””

  1. The author of the best comment will receive an Amazon gift of their choice at Christmas! Please comment as they can add to the article and pass on your valuable experience.
  2. It’s nice to see that some of you are somewhat overcoming your parasitic Toxoplasma gondii brain-hijacking and are now starting to see the real world for what it truly is.

    A 2018 analysis by researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Guelph estimated that typical sterilization rates in feral cat populations subjected to TNR range between 0.7 and 3.5 percent, with the vast majority achieving less than 1 percent sterilization of any community’s feral cat populations. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0192139

    Considering that those who support TNR make up less than 0.005% of the human population, those who oppose TNR-proponents will have little to worry about. Yes, that number is correct. Garnered from facebook statistics on how many on facebook support any faction of TNR with their “likes” votes. That number is not obtained through some biased and manipulative questionnaire given to only cat-lovers to fill out, that paltry less than 0.005 percentage of TNR supporters is from real-world statistics.

    Consequently, this is also why TNR is a failure everywhere it has been enacted. You can’t get more than 0.005% of the population in any community to actually do the trapping and sterilizing, much less put any money where their mouths are. You can barely get that many to support TNR with a nearly effortless and simple “likes” mouse-click. This is why less than 3.5% of all cats in any community on earth, and if averaged it is far below 1%, have ever been sterilized, the other 99% of stray cats always breeding out of control and beyond the meager reach and efforts of TNR proponents. All that time and money totally wasted and accomplishing absolutely nothing. But it sure does feel good, doesn’t it.

    A highly vocal 0.005% of the human population does not a majority make. Enjoy promoting a failed concept whilst also torturing cats to death from your “loving and humane TNR attrition” (“natural attrition” by which all TNR cat populations are reduced: poisons, guns, arrows, road-kill, freezing to the pavement, etc., etc. on ad-infinauseum).

    Are you still feeling good about your cat-torturing values and life that accomplishes absolutely nothing to reduce feral cat populations, but in truth only guarantees more cats that you will be forced to torture to death with TNR-attrition? How do you manage to even look into any mirror now knowing that that is what you truly are and stand for.

    Reply
    • Sigh….you see the world in a very distorted way. It is ironic that you refer to us seeing the real world at last. You need to inject a bit of balance into your arguments. You are obsessed with Toxoplasmosis. Incidentally, have you had a blood test to see if you are infected with it?

      Reply
      • You’re a more logical candidate for testing than “Anonymus”. But then what has logic ever had to do with your arguments? Be that as it may, here’s an essay concerning the inefficacy of TNR which doesn’t mention toxoplasmosis even once, with links to three studies which substantiate its arguments:

        “Trap-Neuter-Release” is utterly ineffective in reducing stray/feral cat populations because:

        * For the nearly four decades TNR and other forms of “no-kill” programs purported to “manage” our burgeoning unconfined cat population have been practiced in North America, no such effort anywhere in the US or Canada has achieved more than a mean sterilization rate of 1% (range 0.7%-3.7%) of any stray/feral cat population in an open system.

        *Per the most commonly accepted analysis published in JAVMA, it’s necessary to sterilize 71%-94% of an unconfined cat population–ANNUALLY–just to achieve “stabilization”, i.e. no net increase, of said population. This means ALL unconfined cats close enough to travel to the target population(s) on their own–not just a so-called “colony.”

        * Since the 1950s worldwide TNR efforts have produced equally dismal results. The pro-TNR group I like to call “Pest Fiends Animal Sociopaths” (i.e. Best Friends Animal Society) once posted online a spreadsheet of TNR efforts worldwide. Of a sample of n = 100 TNR programs, 99 achieved a mean sterilization rate of 0.4% of their target populations. Only one–in Oregon, USA–managed to sterilize 4.7% of the cats in its region. Mean sterilization rate of 100 TNR programs worldwide was ~0.45%. When this was pointed out, “Best Friends” took down its spread sheet out of embarrassment.

        * TNR was first implemented in the UK and Denmark. Despite SIX DECADES of TNR in the UK–rather, BECAUSE of it–the stray/feral cat population has more than doubled–from 4.1 million in 1965 to 9.1 million today (some estimates are as high as 10 million). These estimates were from the RSPCA, another pro-TNR organization. Gotta keep those donations rolling in…

        * Per research papers by two pro-TNR veterinarians, F. B. Nutter and J. K. Levy, unconfined cat populations increase at a mean annual rate of 29% (range 25%-33%). This rate is predicated on the number of feral kittens which survive to reproduce themselves each year–on average about 38 million.

        * It doesn’t take a degree in biostatistics to determine that if unconfined cat populations annually increase at a mean rate of 29%, but are only sterilized at a mean rate of 1% (or less), such sterilization rates’ impact on population growth is negligable. The TNR practitioners will NEVER catch up. Population reduction via TNR is a mathematical impossibility.

        * What exacerbates this problem is that in nearly all cases TNR practitioners FEED their “subjects”. Any organism’s population growth is predicated on availability of food. Natural systems–for example, snowshoe hare and Canada lynx populations–undergo “boom and bust” cycles according to increase/decrease of their food supplies. This doesn’t happen with “community cat colonies”. Human feeding enables such populations to exist at densities beyond the environmental carrying-capacity of any natural predator. Put simply, you don’t get rid of a pest by FEEDING it.

        * The immediate results of the above are: (1) the so-called “vacuum effect” whereby TNR advocates falsely argue their program is more effective than permanent, lethal removal of cats from our environment doesn’t apply to artificial assemblages of domestic animals subsidized by human feeding. Other cats don’t wait for a “colony” cat to die before moving in. If the “vacuum effect” was real, we wouldn’t have cat colonies to begin with. As long as food is available, they will continue to arrive to be fed. (2) Unnaturally high population densities are the single best recipe for zoonotic disease outbreaks. Even among naturally-occurring high densities this is the case–bubonic plague (like cats an invasive species) devastated prairie dog towns because they lived close together in large numbers. Bats are the worst wild rabies vector because they accumulate in dense populations in their roosts. Inducing artificially high densities of cats–the worst domesticated rabies vector in the US–by feeding them near human dwellings is dangerously irresponsible. (3) Domestic cats are reflex-killers. We bred them that way. Even well-fed “colonies” slaughter native mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians indiscriminately. The annual death-toll of native wildlife to this invasive predator is in the tens of BILLIONS. This is inexcuseable and unsustainable. (4) Recent studies have shown that TNR enables unconfined cat colonies increase more rapidly than if the cats weren’t sterilized–or fed–at all.

        * The “bottle-neck”, if you will, with respect to TNR’s nonexistent population-reduction is the trapping process–and it applies to every aspect of population management, including “adoption” rates and even “euthanasia” rates, although of course the latter is still preferable to TNR, as euthanized animals are permanently removed from the environment. Cats simply reproduce far more quickly than they can be trapped. Per every ASPCA estimate I’ve seen over the last five years or so, the mean estimate of US stray and feral cat populations is 84.5 million (range 47 million-122 million). Add to that 58 million (range 50 million-66 million) unconfined “pet” cats, of which 80%–46.6 million–aren’t sterilized.

        * Temperate zone “kitten seasons” are about six months. Therefore, to trap-neuter-release, trap-neuter-adopt or trap-euthanize just ONE cohort (or year-class) of feral kittens in the US, you would have to TNR/TNA/TE 207,754 kittens per DAY. After this Herculean effort you’d have to do it all over again very next kitten season.

        * With respect to “adoption” in particular, there are only about 128 million households in the US. Only one-third of them–about 42.7 million–own even ONE cat. You would be safe to conclude the remaining 85.3 million aren’t “catless” because there’s a shortage. Even if it were possible to (1) sterilize about 38 million new kittens a year and (2) con or coerce every American household without cats into adopting one, every household would have a cat in a little more than two years. After that you’d have to work on convincing them to adopt ANOTHR cat the very next year. Welcome to “Cat-Hoarder Nation”.

        * Perhaps another way to look at this: if half of a colony consisting of 100 cats is culled, you’d have 50 cats left. If half of another colony of 100 cats is sterilized and released (as we’ve seen this is an unrealistically high number), you’d still have 100 cats spreading disease and slaughtering wildlife.

        http://abcbirds.org/…/Roebling-et-al.-2013-Rabies-preventio…
        http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article…
        http://web.nmsu.edu/~groemer/JAVMA%20041215.pdf

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