Art saw an article in the Star Advertiser and thought it might interest everybody. It was written by Matthew C. Tuthill who is an assistant professor of molecular biology and microbiology at the University of Hawaii's Kapiolani Community College. Here is the link to the original article.
Mr. Tuthill said that the idea of cat colony caregivers who were trying to feed stray cats in order to gain their trust so that they could be brought in for sterilization was not working. It was, in fact causing more of a problem by increasing the feral cat numbers.
Incredibly 73 percent of the feral cats in Hawaii are infected with Toxoplasma gondii which is a single- celled parasite that are harmful to people who are immune-compromised or pregnant. He stated that an infected cat sheds about a million resilient cysts into his surroundings that stay viable for a year until a mouse, pet or human becomes infected.
As if that wasn't bad enough, many other studies have shown that surface runoff spreads the Toxoplasma cysts into the water possibly infecting the seal population. He said 13 percent of otter deaths were proven to be from Toxoplasma infection.
Even though human infection is pretty much thought to be benign if healthy and not pregnant, some research showed that it may cause mental or physiological (brain inflammation, cellular damage, clinical depression) alteration.
The part of his article that worried me also was his statement that people are also feeding birds (no kidding!) and mongoose. Cats can harbor Toxoplasma, hookworm, roundworm, heartworm, ringworm, feline leukemia, Salmonella, fleas, etc. Birds and mongoose also harbor parasites and microbes that can be passed on to humans and pets.
There are a lot of feral cats in the neighborhoods of Hawaii. Art loves animals and was tempted to feed them at one time. We've also heard recently that outdoor cats have been killing 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion birds a year. Pretty darn amazing. I don't think it's pigeons they're killing though.
Again, I believe this is another instance of humans upsetting the balance of nature. It's hard to know what is the right thing to do.
Holy mackeral!! Scary stuff.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you need some Pied Pipers.
ReplyDeleteHave a beautiful weekend.
I had no idea. It is a terrible problem in Hawaii, it seems. Very scary information, and sad as well. :-(
ReplyDeleteFeral cats in Brookville, where I live, were recently trapped and/or rounded up and taken to an animal shelter vet to be checked out and fixed so they could not get pregnant or impregnate and then they were released again. After that, we only see a tuxedo cat and then from time to time. I think it is a "He" as our cat, a heavy weight around 18 pounds) is furious when he sees Tuxedo coming up the driveway to our house. I peck on the window to scare him away as I would not want him climbing the board fence in back and getting into our yard where he could and would do some real damage and even tangle with our Jack Russell Terrier, Pepper Jax. Our cat, "Baby Kitty," is not allowed outside so we don't have to worry about him eating the birds we encourage to live here.
ReplyDeleteOi, I wonder if Israel's stray cats have all these bad germs.
ReplyDeleteWhile googling I found that
"Cats were not prominent in Israel’s streets until the 1930s, when they were brought in to help eradicate a rat problem, but this decision ultimately caused a “cat infestation” in and of itself. No one knows exactly how many of the street cats live in Israel now, but estimates say about 2 million, according to Meow Mission."
See about Meow Mitzvah Mission at http://www.jpost.com/Sci-Tech/Article.aspx?id=262100
a very big side effect of not being able to control the pet population. Domestic animals should stay as such. Returning some of the species to the wild is not good for them or anyone else.
ReplyDeletewow, that is scary and could keep feral tourists away...lol!
ReplyDeleteI never even knew what a feral cat was, very educational info Kay, thanks.
ReplyDeleteDo be careful about posting other people's work. Cloudia received an email from the Star-Advertiser to stop posting their articles and photos, which are copyrighted, even though she gave the correct citation.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information. I thought it would be OK to post information from the newspaper if you gave the origin.
DeleteOur area is rampant with stray cats. People drive to our rural area and get rid of their unwanted dogs and cats. Only the fittest will survive and usually the ones formerly domesticated are the first to succumb to predators. Most of us will put out food to attract some barn cats to stay and get rid of vermin.
ReplyDeleteUnintended consequenes...
ReplyDeleteSeems like the feral cats need to be trained to eat the pigeons. I'm sure some Kauai folks would like to minimize their feral rooster problem.
ReplyDelete(I think I forwarded this to my veterinary med student son, but I couldn't click on the title first. After I filled in the sender/recipient info, your intro and paragraphs were at the end of the form.)
DrumMajor
Yes. I know a few kind people who care for these cats at much cost and time.....sad.
ReplyDeleteThen of course, the opposing action may also be an offense...purposefully killing feral cats and birds. What do you do.
ReplyDeleteL...w
Wow Kay, I never heard of the feral cat issue in Hawaii. That is awful! I hope Hawaii can come to some way to take care of this issue.
ReplyDeleteI see the problem has only gotten worse since I lived in Hawaii. I say euthanize (kill) the cats as fast as you can. Soon there will not be a song bird left in the Islands if you don't. Around here its deer, mice, rats, possoms, raccoons, skunks. All have gone wild with less hunting (why we need guns) and no wolves. Coyotes are moving into the city in pursuit of their prey, but they threaten other animals too.
ReplyDeleteFolks with sympathy with these creatures that allow them to proliferate are totally ignorant of how Nature works. It really is 'survival of the fittest' when it comes to the environment. Unfortunately rats and mice are the fittest.
Dianne
Licensing and laws do nothing to curb the problem. If cats are required to be licensed then cat-lovers just stop putting collars on their cats, as they did by me. And they won't even bother getting them micro-chipped, especially not that They want absolutely nothing that can hold them legally responsible, liable, and accountable for the actions of their cats. It's why many of them even keep cats in the first place. We're not talking about the topmost responsible citizens of the world, you know. They don't want that responsibility of what their cat has done coming back on them. If they had even one iota of a sense of responsibility and respect for all other lives on this planet we wouldn't even be having these discussions.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I found something that DOES work, and works well, and works fast (well, relative to the years it takes trying to reason with deceitful and lying cat-lovers that accomplishes ABSOLUTELY NOTHING). Where I live cat-lovers have learned that _ALL_ cats, stray and feral, collared or not, ear-tipped or not (because TNR con-artist liars now just clip cats' ears only, WITHOUT sterilizing or vaccinating them, to protect their hoarded cats from being trapped and euthanized), _ALL_ their cats are humanely shot on sight and buried whenever found away from supervised confinement.
The ONLY thing that works is destroying any of their cats found outdoors off their property. They either learn to stop getting more cats that die under the wheels of cars or from animal attacks, or they finally learn how to be a responsible pet owner, respectful neighbor, and learn to keep their invasive species animal under confined supervision, as it should be. Win win win all around. You can either destroy their cat for them humanely, or let their lack of concern for their cat cause it to die inhumanely. By destroying their cat for them humanely you are showing them that you care more about their cat than even they do. A bullet is by far the most humane death that any free-roaming cat will ever meet. Anything else is all inhumanely downhill from there. Their only other options are being hit by cars, environmental poisons, cat & animal attacks, disease and parasites, freezing, etc., etc.
You can't train a cat to stay home but I found that, in time, you CAN train a cat-owner into being a responsible pet-owner and a respectable neighbor. Most of them are so phenomenally stupid, disrespectful, and criminally irresponsible though that you have to make at least 12-15 of their cats permanently disappear before they even start to figure out what they've been doing wrong all during their sorry, useless, and pathetic lives.
I don't see anyone dumping cats where I live anymore. They don't even adopt more than can be kept under lock & key 24/7. When driving through the area I don't see even one cat on anyone's doorsteps anymore. I always keep an eye out to see if there are more free-roaming cats that will have to be shot one day. And if I'll have to leave fish-oil trails on all the roadsides again, leading right to my IR surveillance system and laser-sighted rifle. (Got more than 70% of the hundreds of them in the area this way, VERY effective.)
Leaving ANY of their invasive species cat outside in my area means instant death for that cat. You'd think everyone else could learn from this simple lesson. The quickest way to solve an unwanted animal and irresponsible pet-owner problem is to let everyone know that you will quickly and humanely destroy every last one of their unwanted, uncared-for, or unsupervised animals for them. They either grow up fast or, far more plausible, dump their animals elsewhere to become someone else's problem.
You just can't be an enabler of criminally irresponsible spineless and heartless idiots -- or they remain that way. (At least where you live, anyway.)
Gulp...
DeleteWow, I was going to say that I have no problem euthanizing feral cats, but then I skimmed the last comment before mine, and now I'm not sure I want to be lumped in with heartless animal killers! Gulp! is right!
ReplyDeleteOur cat goes outside, and she is a killer. We have stopped feeding birds, and she has stopped killing them for the most part. She keeps other cats out of our yard, too. She has had her shots and does not carry disease. That's the best I can do at being a responsible cat owner.
It is people who let a destructive invasive-species roam free that tortures-to-death all other wildlife, wasted for their useless cats' play-toys, that have zero respect for ALL life. They don't even care about their cats dying a slow torturous death from exposure, animal attacks, diseases, starvation, dehydration, becoming road-kill, environmental poisons, etc., the way that ALL stray cats suffer to death. They don't even respect their fellow human being. This speaks more than volumes about your disgusting character. People like you should be locked up in prison for life for your cruelty to all animals, cruelty to your own cats as well as all the native wildlife that you let your cats skin alive or disembowel alive for YOUR entertainment. If you let cats roam free you are violating every animal-abandonment, animal-neglect, animal-endangerment, and invasive-species law in existence.
DeleteYou're not even aware that many of the diseases that cats spread to humans don't even have vaccines against them. These are just the diseases they've been spreading to humans, not counting the ones they spread to all wildlife. THERE ARE NO VACCINES against many of these, and are in-fact listed as bio-terrorism agents. They include: Campylobacter Infection, Cat Scratch Disease, Coxiella burnetti Infection (Q fever), Cryptosporidium Infection, Dipylidium Infection (tapeworm), Hookworm Infection, Leptospira Infection, Giardia, Plague, Rabies, Ringworm, Salmonella Infection, Toxocara Infection, Toxoplasma. [Centers for Disease Control, July 2010] Sarcosporidiosis, Flea-borne Typhus, Tularemia, and Rat Bite Fever can now also be added to that list.
Businesses have even been ruined by some of them. Like those in Miami being shut-down due to feral-cats spreading hookworm in all the beaches there. The most surprising in my research is that many people have already died from cat-to-human transmitted plague in the continental USA. Fleas and rats not even required if you have cats around. The cats themselves are carriers and spreaders of the plague. Totally disproving that oft-spewed myth about lack of cats causing the plague in Europe. Cats would have made it worse.
You have nobody but yourself and everyone just like you to blame for this. YOU are the reason people are now realizing that all excess cats must be destroyed on-site and on-sight. You've done so much to make people care about cats, haven't you. If you want to do something about it, direct your sadly and sorely misplaced energies at those that are causing the problem, not at those who are actually solving it AND HAVE SOLVED IT 100%.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT and THE FAULT OF EVERYONE JUST LIKE YOU. You have NOBODY but yourselves to blame.
You can take that all the way to the very last shot-dead cat's grave.
Cat-lickers have left me with ONLY 2 options over the years.
ReplyDeleteI can either be drawn to animals screaming in my woods every other day for OVER 15 YEARS, to find those screaming animals writhing and twitching on the ground with their skins ripped off their bodies and their guts spilled out -- to then have to stomp a poor suffering animal to death with my own boot to stop it from screaming in agony and put it out of the misery and torment caused by THEIR cat that just attacked it -- OR I can humanely shoot a cat to stop that from happening ever again.
I often wonder which of those ONLY two options that cat-lickers want all others to do on behalf of them and their "cute" kitties?
There are no other options. That's it. Just those two.
Do you want me to have to stomp animals to death that were just attacked by your cats to stop their torture and suffering? Or shoot your cats?
Which is it? That's the ONLY two choices you get. As those are the ONLY two options that you have given to me and all others.
If only I could suspend a a gutted-alive or skinned-alive animal's suffering until a cat-licker opened a package containing an animal tortured by their cats, so that they themselves would have to deal with an animal's torment and suffering caused by their cats, first hand and personal, like I had to do every other day for 15 years. Maybe then they'd "get it". Maybe they need to hear and feel a small SCREECHING IN TORMENT animal's skull pop under the weight of their foot every other day FOR FIFTEEN YEARS before they start to realize the suffering they cause with their cats. Would that solve it?
FOR THAT'S PRECISELY THE MEMORY THAT I MUST LIVE WITH ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR CATS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. Now play stupid, and wonder where all my anger comes from.
Whoa. Chill out. Sounds like you need counseling or a CT scan.
ReplyDelete