Feral cat colonies prompt new program
A proposal was submitted this week to restart the Feral Cat Program at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
The effort to re-establish the program, which aims to stabilize and reduce the population of stray and feral cats on campus, is being led by Dr. Robin Anne Reid, professor of English at A&M-Commerce. Dr. Reid was also in charge of the previous incarnation of the feral cat program, which was discontinued in the fall of 2007.
"Feral cats are kittens born from stray cats and have no social interaction with humans," Reid said. "Feral cats are afraid of humans. They are not affectionate, and are very hard to make pets."
According to Reid, the conditions that support feral cats are present in many communities.
"Feral cats will occur in any institutional setting; any place with people, food and dumpsters, there will be cats," Reid said.
Under the new program, the cats will be humanely trapped, given basic veterinary care, spayed or neutered and released back onto the campus. Dr. Gary Thompson, who is assisting Dr. Reid with the program, will perform the surgeries on the cats at no charge at the Commerce Veterinary Clinic. Feeding stations will also be installed to feed the animals once they are released.
"We plan on incrementally increasing care," Thompson said. "Then we will be able to see what kind of impact spaying and neutering has."
Reid is currently working on a formal proposal to send to University President Dr. Dan Jones in order to approve the program.
"[Dr. Reid is] the moving force on that," Jones said. "She came to me and asked if I would be interested in giving this a shot. The idea is that you sterilize the population and it therefore becomes self-controlled because they're not reproducing."
While Jones is optimistic that the program will be a success, he did express that the program will need to produce some tangible results in order for it to continue.
"The only thing I asked [Dr. Reid] to do was to put in some performance targets, so that after we're doing this for a year we can measure our success and see if it is an effective program," Jones said.
Reid has suggested the Animal Welfare Committee, headed by Dr. Lani Lyman-Henley, will serve as oversight for the project. In addition, involving the biology department will give students the opportunity for research projects to study the effectiveness of the program.
"We want to get students involved," Reid said. "We want to establish an educational model on how to deal with feral cats in the future."
Reid hopes if the feral cat program is successful it can be applied to the surrounding community and beyond. Even in Commerce, the cat problem is larger than many residents may realize.
"There are approximately 30 to 35 feral cat colonies in Commerce," Reid said. "For every cat you see, there are 10 more you do not see."
According to Dr. Jones, it is the involvement of students and the potential for greater good to the community that makes the new program an attractive idea.
"That was the thing that was really appealing to me," Jones said. "There's a lot of ways to control the cat population, but if we can get students involved in research projects in how you handle this and engage them in coming up with creative solutions, then it becomes an academic problem and part of the educational experience."
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