CHICAGO — They may be apathetic about you at times and their feces may contain rage-inducing toxins, but are cats really spawns of Satan?
According to allergy-plagued Tribune columnist John Kass they are — and some city bird lovers are right there with him.
As Chicago has become increasingly overrun with rats, some residents have turned to feral cat colonies to do their thing and hunt down the rodents. In programs supported by the county, feral cat caretakers trap, neuter and release stray felines, often hosting the animals in their yards or garages.
But Kass and bird enthusiasts believe that cats are an "invasive species" and shouldn't be running free to snack on wildlife. In a column this week, Kass suggested that using cats to curb rats is really a "scam" that enables "a vicious predator that loves chewing the heads off baby songbirds" while letting the mayor off the hook for the city's rat problem.
"I'm also told that cats are considered to be familiars of Satan, and that they're eager to suck the souls from babies if you let them," Kass wrote.
Jill Niland of the Chicago Ornithological Society said "billions" of birds are killed by cats annually, calling them a "non-native predator species" whose victims generally included smaller animals with few to no defense mechanisms to protect themselves.
But supporters of feral cat colonies took issue with Kass' column, and some claims made by the Audubon Society in it. Dave de Funiak, executive director of the Tree House Humane Society, responded to Kass on the organization's website.
"Comparing cats to 'cold-blooded murderers' is anthropomorphizing at its darkest, and it shows the bias of Mr. Kass against our feline friends," de Funiak wrote. "Not to mention the generalization of cat lovers and their personalities, which I find offensive as a fan of sports, rock music and many other things that don’t fall into the crazy cat lady stereotype that he portrays."
Wait — How Many Dead Birds?
Steve Dale, a certified animal behavior consultant and pet journalist, said feral cats do consume birds in the wild — about 32 percent of their diet (or 15 million birds a year), but scoffed at numbers thrown around by some bird conservation groups suggesting 1.4 billion to 4 billion birds die annually because of outdoor cats.
De Funiak also said those numbers are exaggerated.
"It’s common knowledge that habitat loss and pollution play the most significant role in the reduction of native bird populations, far more than the outdoor cat population," de Funiak wrote. "It’s a misperception that feral cats play any sort of significant role in the declining bird populations, perpetuated by people like Mr. Kass, who was obviously swayed by a conversation with a representative of the Audubon Society, and maybe in part due to the fact that he’s 'deathly allergic' to cats."
And while the Audubon Society said science backs up its feral cat bird murder numbers, other researchers said there's "no empirical data" on how many feral/stray cats are in the United States.
Before Cook County approved the trap-and-neuter (or TNR) ordinance, de Funiak said Chicago's Animal Control Department was scrambling for solutions to the growing stray cat problem. Five years in, the stray population declined by 30 percent due to the county's efforts. Plus, de Funiak wrote, feral cats aren't always the problem when it comes to birds.
"While domesticated cats allowed to roam might kill the occasional bird, this is not the case nearly as often in feral cat colonies with caretakers who feed the cats on a consistent basis," he wrote.
LEFT: A rat hole in a Lincoln Park resident's yard. The neighborhood is turning to feral cats, one pictured in an "acclimation crate." [Provided/Treehouse Humane Society]
Is 'TNR' Bad For The Cats?
Some opponents of feral colonies, including Niland, describe trap-neuter-release as "cruel," saying outdoor cats die within the first two or three years of living outside and often fall victim to larger predators.
John Norton, a former Animal Care And Control worker known as "Trapper John," believes euthanizing cats is better than letting them live outdoors, and has even attempted to trap micro-chipped cats from registered colonies.
Even PETA applies similar logic, questioning the responsiveness of caretakers and calling cats a "threat to wildlife" because they kill other animals. They don't support euthanizing the cats, however.
That, de Funiak wrote, is the problem: those critical of trap-neuter-release "offer no alternatives for controlling the feral cat population."
"Prior to the passing of the [trap-neuter-release] ordinance in Cook County, the only approach was a complaint-driven response from overburdened animal control officers to trap and euthanize as many feral cats as they could catch in a given area," he wrote. "These animal control agencies didn’t have the resources to perform sustained trapping projects, and therefore their efforts were negated as cat colony populations accelerated at a compounding rate.
"Tree House and other animal welfare agencies across the country have identified a humane solution that offers spay/neuter surgery, vaccinations and ongoing support for these homeless cats, and then it asks for the help of the community to monitor their care, and in turn these caretakers and their cats can help eliminate the truly invasive species — rats."
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