Feral Cats

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The big-ado-about-nothing of a few feral cats in a section of Bellaire is easily resolved. Large cities with feral cat populations in the thousands, succesfully stabilize and manage such colonies with the "trap-sterilize (and vaccinate)-release" method. Areas once plagued by diseased and breeding cats have none of the former problems and, also, control numbers by attrition.

It is important to understand than any other way to handle the situation will fail. If you kill or remove the cats, others will move in. If you don't feed them, they will overturn garbage cans. Would you rather have a limited number of non-breeding, healthy cats working for YOU, or have to resort to draconian measures which solve nothing and will turn a majority of voting citizens against the City Council?

Preserving the existing colony or colonies of cats will benefit everyone. Why? Because (1) the cats will keep new marauding cats out of the neighborhood in question (and new cats will keep coming until city-wide sterilization is enforced); and (2) the occasional turd in the flower bed is a small price to pay for keeping the area free of rats. Rats take care of mice, but only cats can keep rats away effectively.

Some people have difficulty living with the checks and balances of nature; they will complain about anything. On the other hand, the City of Bellaire, adjacent to my own neighborhood, owes a big debt of gratitude to the good people who feed those unwanted cats, because they save the city of Bellaire the money that would be ill-spent in a loosing battle with poisons, traps, and other public dangers.

Cats are the natural, safe, economical, successful way to take care of a problem people have been unable to resolve since time immemorial: rats.

Respectfully. -- Dolores Proubasta