Trapping feral cats
Lets not beat around the bush here. Neutering feral cats is a risky business for the cat, not least in field situations and temporary neutering clinics. So why do we do it?
There is no doubt that neutering a cat is one of the best things you can do for that animal. The health and welfare benefits are immense. Even more so for street cats. Just achieving this aim, while great in itself, isn't enough for us. There is another equally important aim and that is population control. This is often aspired to on neutering projects but so often not achieved. But we like to think that it is by us.
There is no such thing as a "cat fairy" that brings cats to be neutered. They have to be trapped carefully, humanely and logically. Just having a vet visit and waiting for random cats from a wide area to be brought in doesn't achieve anything in terms of population control. Yes, it's great for those cats, but the population continues to grow. Indeed poor trapping creates a hardcore of uncatchable cats which continually repopulate and refuel colonies.
Cats are intelligent. After a cat has seen others caught, it quickly learns that traps are bad news. How many other cats it needs to see caught before it figures this out will depend on how intelligent the individual cat is.
Some of the ways we get round this are:
Using manual traps - more cats per activation of the trap, less unneccessary trapping, more quick removal of trapped cats once caught. So many groups don't do this. In 2006 we spent a week picking up the pieces after a previous group which did not manual trap had visited and left so many cats uncaught.Working colony by colony, finishing one job before the next. We take our own volunteers to help train local colleagues and to implement both these skills.We choose our sites carefully. We cannot save the world, our resources are finite, so we stick to locations where we feel we can finish the job.We never let trappers loose untrained - we recognise that trapping is a skill that has to be learned and so require some experience with animals in our volunteers, and provide proper training and buddying before working solo. Elsewhere we have seen people step off a plane having never worked with animals before, being let loose with a trap and creating a very large colony of uncatchable unneutered cats very quickly. We provide and insist on proper equipment for the job. Decent, proper traps, and transfer cages for every fieldworker. So often, either poor equipment or poor technique leads to cats that have been caught being lost during the transfer process or escaping from the clinic. We have NEVER had a cat escape from the clinic in over 6000 cats.We insist on ear tipping. Too often charities ignore this bit or use and promote the wrong techniques. No ear tipping or poor ear tipping means unneccessary surgery for cats and often means clinic capacity wasted; or leads to unneccessary retrapping.So you want to be a trapper?
Can you deal with going to sleep at 1 am only to be up again at 6?Can you deal with difficult, awkard, obstructive people who may not speak the same language as you?Can you sit for hours outside a cafe trapping cats, but not being able to go in and have a bite to eat?Can you drive safely in a foreign location with minimal directions?Can you organise yourself and your day well to ensure you are trapping at the right places at the right time?Do you have experience in animal welfare or veterinary work?
If you can, we'd like to hear from you. Email us at volunteering@kismetaccount.org.uk
The Kismet Account... Protecting stray animals & supporting their carers since 1983
