Wayne Allen
PDT Staff Writer
At the Scioto County Health Coalition meeting Friday, it was announced that Yost Engineering and the Portsmouth City Health Department will be teaming up to help address stray and feral cats issues.
“I’m sure as everyone knows there is a big problem with feral cats in Portsmouth. We’ve had a lots of complaints and unfortunately not much funding to deal with this issue. Yost Engineering came to us with a proposal that we’ve been working on,” said Andrew Gedeon, RS Director of Environmental Health for the Portsmouth City Health Department.
Gedeon introduced Amy Shropshire, Marketing Director for Yost Engineering, who spoke to those in attendance about the issue.
“What we want to talk about is all of the stray and feral cats that we see running around town, getting into dumpsters and making a big mess of things,” Shropshire said. “One of the things we have noticed at our company (Yost Engineering), is that we have 15 or 20 (stray and feral cats) in that area, that are just running amok, breeding, dying, getting in fights, waking people up in the middle of the night and digging up plant beds. The other problem is that people routinely drop off animals at the flood wall.”
She said each year the employees of Yost Engineering look at different causes to donate funds toward.
“Each employee gets $300 that they can allocate to a cause that would benefit the community. So, this year we voted $1,700 to seeing if we could put together a trap, neuter, return program for Portsmouth or at least getting it started,” Shropshire said.
Shropshire said one the reasons they would like to get this program started is based on a study conducted by Brenda Griffin of Cornell University. The study estimates that one un-spayed female cat produces two litters per year. If two kittens from those litters survive to reproduce and if none of those cats are spayed or neutered, in five years there’s a possibility of 59,049 cat offspring all originating from the one un-spayed female cat. That is nearly triple the population of the city of Portsmouth, according to the latest U.S. census data.
“So, you could imagine if do not address this issue, it could lead to a pretty big problem. Some people have said, why don’t we just find homes for these cats? These are feral cats, they can not be homed, they are dangerous,” Shropshire said.
Shropshire said she was working with a trap, neuter, return program in Columbus and was bitten through the finger trying to catch a cat.
“We don’t want people interacting with these cats. But, we do want to make sure people are kept safe from these cats,” Shropshire said.
She said the one thing they do not want to do is catch and kill these cats or catch and relocate.
“What’s been found is that trap, neuter, return programs do a good job of stabilizing them (stray and feral cats) and making them better neighbors. It makes them less aggressive and less of a risk for the people that live around them,” Shropshire said.
She said places that have implemented trap, neuter, return programs include Stanford University, Texas A&M, North Carolina State University, University of Florida, the city of San Francisco, Baltimore and Washington D.C. among others.
“What we would like to do is take that money that we’ve set aside and coordinate with people to implement a trap, neuter, return program here. We want to start with the area around the flood wall. We’re familiar with the area and have an idea about the animals that are down there,” Shropshire said. “Hopefully as we do this we can evaluate it and see if it works, so we don’t get those 56,000 cats running around the area.”
According to Chris Smith, Commissioner with the Portsmouth City Health Department, the proposed program would assist in saving the city some money.
“We spend a lot of money that we don’t have anymore in catching them (stray and feral cats) and putting them to sleep. We spend about $30 for every cat that we capture. Before, when we capture a cat, we have to hold it for three days and then we have to have it put down,” Smith said. “This is a never-ending problem and with the city’s budget cuts, we had to cut back on our cat program. So, we have to be more creative and this is a much better solution.”
Wayne Allen may be reached at 740-353-3101, ext. 228, or tallen@civitasmedia.com.
The TNR CON-GAME
FACT: Trap & Kill failed because cats cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control.
FACT: Trap, Neuter, & Release (TNR) is an even bigger abject failure because these man-made ecological disasters cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control, and they also continue the cruelly annihilate all native wildlife (from the smallest of prey up to the top predators that are starved to death), and the cats continue to spread many deadly diseases that they carry today -- FOR WHICH THERE ARE NO VACCINES AGAINST THEM. Many of which are even listed as bioterrorism agents. (Such as Tularemia and The Plague -- Yes, people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA. No fleas nor rats even required. The cats themselves carry and transmit the plague all on their own.)
FACT: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY _NOTHING_ HUMANE ABOUT TNR. Nearly every last TNR'ed cat dies an inhumane death by road-kill, from cat and animal attacks, environmental poisons, starvation, dehydration, freezing to death, infections, parasites, etc. And if very very lucky humanely shot to death or re-trapped and drowned (the two most common methods employed on all farms and ranches to protect their gestating livestock's offspring and valuable native wildlife dying from cats' Toxoplasmosis parasites). This doesn't begin to count the thousands of defenseless native animals that cats skin alive and disembowel alive for their daily and hourly play-toys. The only difference in destroying cats immediately and humanely instead of trapping, sterilizing, then releasing them to an inhumane death; is that money isn't going into an HSUS or SPCA board-member's pocket, veterinarian's pocket, cat-food company CEO's pocket, or a drug-company CEO's pocket. And that's the ONLY difference!
FACT: Cats are a man-made (through selective breeding) invasive species. And as such, are no less of a man-made environmental disaster than any other caused by man. Cats are even worse than an oil-spill of continent-sized proportions. They not only kill off rare and endangered marine-mammals along all coastlines from run-off carrying cats' Toxoplasma gondii parasites, they destroy the complete food-chain in every ecosystem where cats are found. From smallest of prey gutted and skinned alive for cats' tortured play-toys, up to the top predators that are starved to death from cats destroying their ONLY food sources. (Precisely what cats caused on my own land not long ago.)
FACT: Hunted To Extinction (or in this case, extirpation of all outdoor cats) is the ONLY method that is faster than a species like cats can exponentially out-breed and out-adapt to. Especially a man-made invasive species like these cats that can breed 2-4X's faster than any naturally occurring cat-species.
FACT: In _TWELVE_YEARS_ Alley Cat ALL-LIES of NYC have only reduced feral cats in their own city by 0.08% to 0.024% (as the months go on that percentage becomes more insignificant), allowing more than 99.92% to 99.976% to exponentially breed out of control. Here's how Alley-Cat-ALL-LIES' deceptive math works: If you TNR 4 cats and 3 get flattened by cars this translates to 75% fewer feral-cats everywhere. Alley Cat ALL-LIES can't even reduce cats in their own city, yet they promote it as a worldwide solution. Then even bigger fools fall for it and promote it.
FACT: When researching over 100 of the most "successful" TNR programs worldwide, JUST ONE trapped more than 0.4%. Oregon's 50,000 TNR'ed cats (the highest rate I found) is 4.9% of all ferals in their state. Yet, by applying population growth calculus on the unsterilized 95.1% they will have trapped only 0.35% of all cats in their state sometime this year. Less than 0.4% is a far cry from the required 80%-90% to be the least bit effective.
FACT: Their mythical "vacuum effect" is a 100% LIE. A study done by the Texas A&M University proved that any perceived "vacuum" is just the simple case that CATS ATTRACT CATS. Get rid of them all and there's no cats there to attract more. I proved this myself by shooting and burying hundreds of them on my own land. ZERO cats replaced them FOR 3 YEARS NOW. If you want more cats, keep even one of them around, more will find you. That university study also found that sterilized cats very poorly defend any territory. Non-sterilized cats, being more aggressive, take over the sterilized cats' resources (shelter & food if any). If there is any kind of "vacuum effect" at all, it is that sterilizing cats cause non-sterilized cats to restore the reproductive void.
FACT: During all this investigation I have discovered something that is unfaltering without fail. Something that you can bet your very life on and win every last time. That being -- IF A TNR CAT-HOARDER IS TALKING THEN THEY ARE LYING. 100% guaranteed!
Oh, SOPA snunk in that they they don't do retail, hah. Wonder if they do their windows.........