Guest guest Posted November 6, 2009 Report Share Posted November 6, 2009 Chinny Krishna's work in India is briefly discussed here, but most of this item directly pertains only to the United States. Nonetheless, much of the information may be of value to people who are seeing rapid increases in their local cat population, as the street dog population declines. --\ ------------- From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2009: What to call cats, & why their name matters Commentary by Merritt Clifton In the beginning of the mass media era was just the word " cat. " Cats were on the land and over the land, but cat-related controversies were as seldom seen as cats themselves, in an urban ecology then dominated by ubiquitous street dogs. From the debut of rotary-printed newspapers in the mid-19th century, cats by any name were not a visible problem for more than 60 years. The sum of reportage and editorial attention to cats in the entire 19th century was slight: just 192 items published in U.S. newspapers mentioned " stray cats, " according to NewspaperArchive.com, which makes accessible the newspaper holdings of the Library of Congress. " Alley cats " were mentioned 32 times. The term " feral cat " was not used at all. 1910, however, was perhaps the worst year for the image of cats in more than two centuries, since cats were last commonly condemned as alleged " familiars " of " witches. " In 1910 the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that outbreaks of rabies, diptheria, tuberculosis, and smallpox had been traced to " alley cats " consorting with free-roaming pets.. " As much danger lurks in a cat as in a rat, " the USDA warned. Controlling disease by tracing vectors and trying to eliminate them was already an old idea. This had been a primary pretext for the medieval purges of alleged witches and familiars, which actually had the net effect of purging whole regions of traditional healers, and of extirpating one of the first lines of community defense against disease-carrying rodents. Dogs consumed as many rats and mice as ever, but they could not go everywhere a cat can. Millions of people died because cats were persecuted. The USDA in 1910 was trying to be scientific, but despite having gained a basic understanding of the roles of microbes and viruses, the USDA scientists still understood disease transmission only slightly better than the judges at witch trials. Among the then-common epidemic diseases that the USDA attributed to cats, only rabies is actually easily transmissible by cats, and then only if the cats have had exposure to other rabid species. As cats are not the host species for any rabies strain, they are not a primary rabies vector. " The stray cat therefore not having the proper attention should be exterminated, " recommended the Washington Post in 1913. " Some physicians are in favor not only of exterminating the stray cat but of isolating the pet cat when there is disease present. " Then as now, people concerned about cat proliferation scared themselves and others with exaggerated estimates of feline fecundity. " One stray cat will bring from ten to 50 kittens into the world, " projected a syndicated article published by many Midwestern newspapers in 1912. The tendency to exaggerate continued even after John Marbanks conducted exhaustive research to put the U.S. population of stray cats at circa 10 million in 1927, 20 million in 1937, and 30 million in 1950. The gist of Marbanks' findings was that cats were occupying habitat left by a declining population of street dogs, at the rate of about three cats moving in to replace each dog who could no longer make a living after refuse was mostly buried or burned, sewers were enclosed, and automobiles replaced animal-powered transport, resulting in an urban environment much less congenial to dogs. Birders decrying cat depredation and hunters clamoring for an open season on cats responded to Marbanks by insisting that the cat population at large was closer to 80 million. " It is our duty to eliminate the vagrant or feral cat, " editorialized the Indiana Progress, of Indiana, Pennsylvania, on May 5, 1920. This appears to have been the first use of the term " feral cat " in U.S. public discourse. The second use was no more cat-friendly: " There can be but one solution to the feral cat problem: shoot the cat wherever you find him, " recommended the Connellsville Daily Courier, also of Pennsylvania, in 1931. " Feral cat " did not catch on. " Stray cats " turned up in 8,602 articles published between 1900 and 1991; " alley cats " appeared in 17,662 articles; " feral cats " were mentioned only nine times before 1950, and just 74 times more in the next 40 years. The Fremont Argus, of Fremont, California, published the apparent first mainstream definition of " feral cat " on August 21, 1971: " A feral cat is any domestic pussy that has been neglected or abandoned by its owner and returned to a state of nature. It hunts to live. Mice make up a large portion of its diet. " The presumption that most feral cats once had a home, now known to be false, was a carryover from common perception of " strays. " The term " stray " is derived from the words " astray " and " estray. " The former means " out of place, " while the latter is the legal definition of an animal found at large. " Stray, " accordingly, connotes an animal who should be somewhere else, under human care. Consigning cats to an alley, humble though the habitat is, suggests that the alley is their natural place. Though " stray cat " and " alley cat " have always been used more-or-less interchangeably, to describe the same animals, " strays " have never gotten good press. Conversely, " alley " cats have often been mentioned in favorable and even admiring contexts, even when " strays " were least accepted. A Mrs. Freeman, for instance, defended alley cats against the USDA denunciation in 1910 by contending that she had been " just a plain scrawny little alley cat herself in a past life, " according to the Logansport Reporter, of Logansport, Indiana. Alley cat exhibitions meant to improve the image of homeless cats were held as early as 1928, apparently beginning in Masillon, Ohio. Paradoxically, animal advocates of the mid-20th century campaigned for the use of " stray. " This appears to have begun with efforts to get people to take responsibility for cats they fed and tolerated in their yards and under their porches. A " stray " cat was a waif who should be adopted, according to humane literature of the era. An " alley cat " was believed to be much less likely to find a home--or to reman in one. There was also an aesthetic aspect to the argument. Contended a Miss Miller of Chicago to various media in 1941, " The term 'alley cat' is not a nice way to designate cats. " Unfortunately for many millions of cats, the gradual ascendence of " stray " over " alley " coincided with intensified efforts to kill them. " Alley " cats were largely left alone by " dogcatchers " in the first half of the 20th century, despite the antipathy of birders, hunters, and the USDA. Available records indicate, however, that more " stray " cats were purged by animal control agencies and humane societies in the 33 years between 1950 and 1983 than in the whole 331 years that cats were actively persecuted in medieval Europe, from the Great Plague of 1334 through the London Plague of 1665. Maverick Cats The next big change in public perception of cats-- and public policy toward cats--began with the 1982 publication of Maverick Cats, by Vermont architect Ellen Perry Berkeley. In original definition, a " maverick " is a heifer gone " estray. " Looking critically at the concept of " stray " as applied to cats, Berkeley argued that cats are by nature less a domesticated species than easily tamed wildlife. Berkeley described three states of being of cats: true ferals, who have never lived with humans; cats who are dependent upon humans; and actual strays, who once depended on humans but were abandoned or lost. Many cats move back and forth among the categories, Berkeley acknowledged. However, she established that the most resilient outdoor cats, most resistant to extermination, are the true ferals. Their numbers are regulated by the abundance of prey and extremes of climate, as are the numbers of other wild predators. Like coyotes, feral cats respond to persecution by raising larger litters, more often. Because cats have evolved the fecundity of a prey species, they can usually reoccupy a habitat from which they have been extirpated faster than rival predators can arrive and breed up to the vacated carrying capacity. Lastingly reducing the feral cat population can accordingly be done only by either eliminating their food sources or by inhibiting their fecundity. Feral cats live mostly on mice. Humans have sought to exterminate mice since the dawn of civilization, without success sufficient to deplete the cat population through lack of food. Thus further reducing the feral cat food supply is unlikely in most of the places where feral cats persist. Neuter/return, however, is an effective brake on fecundity. To what extent Maverick Cats influenced the first large-scale practitioners of neuter/return in the U.S. is difficult to say, since hundreds of individuals had already quietly sterilized thousands of cats in quiet private projects, some of them underway as of 1982 for as long as 25 years. What can be said is that Maverick Cats gave neuter/return a theoretical foundation and an oft-cited scientific canon. The first well-documented feral cat neuter/return project in the U.S. appears to have begun at Stanford University in California in 1988, led by Nathan Winograd, then a Stanford undergraduate, now director of the No Kill Advocacy Center. But it was not immediately influential, and for the first several years of the project Winograd described the cats as " stray " rather than " feral, " a term then still rarely applied to cats. On October 16, 1991 Louise Holton and Becky Robinson formed the national advocacy group Alley Cat Allies, after working together to sterilize a cat colony inhabiting an alley in Washington D.C., and after extensive discussion of the ideas in Maverick Cats with Kim Bartlett, then editor of the Animals' Agenda magazine, and myself, then the Animals' Agenda news editor. Soon afterward Bartlett initiated a neuter/return project that handled 330 cats in seven months from eight colony habitats in northern Fairfield County, Connecticut. This project, closely monitored and extensively publicized, in May 1992 became the first activity of ANIMAL PEOPLE. As Holton and Robinson mostly used the term " alley cat " at first, the Connecticut feral cat project appears to have introduced prominent use of the term " feral " cats. Alley Cat Allies was quick to recognize that " feral " was gaining acceptance. When Alley Cat Allies began organizing an annual day of cat awareness activity to mark their formation, it was called " National Feral Cat Day. " This day now attracts more media notice than many " days " declared by humane organizations that are decades older. From 1920 through 1991, according to Newspaper-Archive, " feral cats " had been mentioned in U.S. daily newspapers just 134 times. From 1992 to October 2009, " feral cats " have been mentioned 11,615 times--2,000 mentions fewer than " stray cats, " but 3,000 mentions more than " alley cats, " the prevailing term before 1950. About 70% of the cats killed in U.S. shelters are now said to be " feral. " Nonetheless, the advent of high-volume neuter/return has held the toll of cats killed in shelters during the past decade to about two million per year. This was approximately 25% of the toll in 1990 and less than 10% of the peak reached in the early 1970s. Neuter/return was and remains the tool used to effect this dramatic drop in shelter killing. The concept encouraging the humane community to accept neuter/return was that a substantial part of the " stray " cat population are in truth ferals, as capable of looking out for themselves as any other wildlife. Animal advocates may not want them to be at large, for reasons including preventing predation on wildlife and avoiding the risk that the cats will be cruelly treated. Yet feral cats are now widely appreciated as anything but the miserable helpless waifs depicted in earlier humane literature, who must be killed for their own good because they cannot survive outside of a kind human home without unnatural suffering. What dogs have to do with it While this transition in perception of feral cats was underway, the rest of the world was approaching through a process of parallel evolution a whole new approach to rabies control and coping with street dogs. Historically, street dogs have usually been tolerated as a constant if occasionally problematic presence, between rabies outbreaks. In response to rabies outbreaks, dogs were and often still are killed in great numbers, but street dog populations inevitably rebound from massacres within a matter of months--like feral cats--and have usually been ignored after rebounding until the next rabies episode. Three developments are gradually changing the paradigm for street dogs, decades after each was introduced. First, longtime Blue Cross of India chief executive Chinny Krishna in 1966 began demonstrating neuter/return of street dogs. Krishna was so far ahead of his time that even the U.S. then had only one low-cost dog and cat sterilization program. Thirty years elapsed before Krishna's approach became the official policy of the city of Chennai, but within another year his Animal Birth Control program became the national policy of India. Krishna's original ABC program, augmented by others, had by 2006 eradicated rabies from Chennai. Parallel programs eradicated rabies from Jaipur and Visakhapatnam. Federally subsidized ABC projects are now underway throughout India. ABC meanwhile became national policy in Costa Rica in 2001, and in Turkey in 2003. Similar programs are underway in many other parts of the world. Before sterilizing and vaccinating street dogs could become accepted, animal control officials had to learn--and accept--that traditional high-volume killing had never really quelled rabies outbreaks, and that a new method was necessary. As animal control agencies worldwide mostly work under public health departments, the impetus to change directions had to come from public health directors. A breakthrough came in 1983 from William G. Winkler M.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Wrote Winkler in the National Academy of Sciences' handbook Control of Rabies: " Persistent trapping or poisoning campaigns as a means to rabies control should be abolished. There is no evidence that these costly and politically attractive programs reduce either wildlife reservoirs or rabies incidence. " Winkler referred to botched efforts to control the mid-Atlantic states raccoon rabies pandemic of 1976-1996. Triggered by trappers and coonhunters who translocated several thousand raccoons from a rabies area in Florida to the Great Smokey Mountains of West Virginia, the pandemic advanced for 15 years at the rate of about 50 miles per year, while wildlife agencies in state after state tried to stop it by urging trappers and coonhunters to kill more raccoons. The pandemic was at last stopped by deploying oral rabies vaccine pellets, bio-engineered to attract raccoons and be activated only by raccoons' digestive systems. A decade of controversy after Winkler wrote, the National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians conceded in the 1994 edition of their annual Compendium of Animal Rabies Control that " Continuous and persistent government-funded programs for trapping or poisoning wildlife are not cost effective in reducing wildlife rabies reservoirs on a statewide basis. " Similar passages have appeared in each subsequent update of the Compendium of Animal Rabies Control. The conceptual leap to recognizing street dogs as wildlife was accomplished in the mid-1980s by Oscar Pedro Larghi, M.D., of Argentina. First Larghi eradicated rabies in the cities of Buenos Aires, Lima, and Sao Paolo by vaccinating from 60% to 80% of their estimated dog populations during a series of three-month neighborhood blitzes. Then his vaccination teams eradicated canine rabies entirely from Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay by vaccinating more than a million dogs. As the Larghi project was not followed up, and not accompanied by a vigorous dog sterilization program, all three nations again have vulnerable dog populations. Canine rabies has reappeared in two remote corners of Argentina. In addition, since routine animal control dog-killing continued where Larghi worked, his results are not unequivocal proof of the efficacy of mass vaccination in lieu of killing. Nonetheless, Larghi showed that vaccinating street dogs under developing world conditions can be done with great success. " Community " animals Among the first to notice were Calum N.L. MacPherson, Francois X. Meslin, and Alexander I. Wandeler, who in 1990 co-authored Dogs, Zoonoses, & Public Health. Updated several times, this is still a much-used standard reference. Before writing the book, recalls Meslin, who heads the rabies control division of the World Health Organization, " We defined through a WHO consultation held in the late 1980s the terms and categories of animals, mostly dogs, in relation to rabies control or elimination, along a continuum from 'fully owned' to 'strictly feral,' acknowledging that all states in between might exist under certain circumstances. " The purpose of the consultation was twofold. One purpose was to establish priorities for response. The other was to harmonize the terminology that might be used by anyone working to control any disease carried by street animals--dogs, cats, monkeys, pigs, whatever. The animals of most concern to the public health sector are those who both have frequent contact with humans and roam at large, able to contract and spread disease from a variety of sources. Strictly feral animals are of concern if they have contact with animals who associate with people, but are considered to represent a much lower order of risk than animals who themselves seek--or accept--human contact. The WHO Steering Committee for Rabies Control in Asia in 2003 did not even mention feral dogs in defining the three categories of dog who are of most concern: Community dog: A dog without a single owner and cared for by the community. Pet dog: A dog owned by a household. Stray dog: An ownerless dog, free roaming and not cared for by any household in a community. The main distinction between a " community " dog and a " stray " is that the " community " dog is fed by people who do not otherwise take responsibility for the dog's well-being. A pet dog might be vaccinated, de-wormed, and kept away from contact with diseased animals. A stray dog may welcome human contact, but not receive much. The " community " dog represents the top priority of concern because this dog is neither protected from disease as much as a pet might be, nor likely to avoid humans if ill. Since 2003, " community " animals, primarily dogs, have been the subject of nearly four times more international public health alerts and peer-reviewed papers about zoonotic disease control than " feral " animals. But the humane sector and the public health sector communicate surprisingly little, even though both are integrally involved in both animal control and disease control. Except in India, where Meslin coordinates activity with the Animal Welfare Board of India, WHO works chiefly in nations with underdeveloped humane networks--or none. On October 16, 2009 the Best Friends Animal Society marked National Feral Cat Day by announcing a campaign to rename yet again the animals who have been variously recognized as feral cats, stray cats, and alley cats. " Best Friends believes that the needs of free-roaming cats and the issues surrounding them-which exist in every community-are best encapsulated in the term 'community cats,' " asserted Best Friends " Focus on Felines " campaign specialist Shelly Kotter. " These homeless cats are the result of a failure in the community--unneutered housecats who wandered away from home, cats abandoned when the family moved, or cats who have never been socialized to people, " continued Kotter. " None would be on the streets if people had spayed or neutered their pets and kept their cats safe. " Best Friends turned out to be unaware that their argument paralleled the arguments made against " alley cat " and in favor of " stray cat " more than half a century earlier. Public health concerns Of more serious concern, Best Friends also turned out to be oblivious to the established meaning of " community " as applied to animals by the public health sector--a sector with frequent influential input into every hospital, most medical doctors' offices, and political decision-making processes. The USDA, when it recommended feral cat extermination in 1910, had a mere fraction of the reach and credibility that public health policy makers enjoy today. Indeed, the 2008 USA Today/Gallup poll rating the honesty and ethics of workers in 21 different professions found that nurses, pharmacists, and medical doctors rated first, second, and fourth. Fortunately for feral cats, the U.S. public health sector has in recent decades mostly not joined wildlife conservation agencies and advocacy groups in seeking cat extirpation from outdoor habitat, and has mostly been sympathetic toward efforts to ensure that feral cats are vaccinated and sterilized. The sympathetic neutrality of the public health sector is no small consideration for neuter/return practitioners, since just one anti-feral cat organization, The Nature Conservancy, by itself receives annual donated income amounting to about half of the total income of the entire U.S. humane sector. The U.S. public health sector is concerned about many diseases, besides rabies, which have recently been associated with feral cats and have killed people, especially the immune compromised. Among these diseases are Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome, bubonic plague, the H5N1 avian flu, bartonella, caliciviruses, distemper, hantaviruses, toxoplasmosis, and a variety of nasty ailments carried by ticks. Most of the human fatalities linked to contact with feral cats have occurred abroad, but U.S. public health policy makers are aware that the U.S. has far more cats per capita than most of the rest of the world, and there is some misapprehension--chiefly due to exaggerated activist claims--that the U.S. feral cat population is six to ten times larger than it really is. Inherent in using the term " community cats " is the risk that some of the public health sector will understand the introduction of " community " in place of " feral " to mean that the formerly small, isolated, and scattered feral cat population has become a larger and more dangerous reservoir of potential disease vectors, like the " community " animals abroad. " You make good and probably historically accurate points, " conceded Best Friends cofounder Francis Battista, " but we have transited the point where public policy operates independently of public opinion, and unless cats start flying into jet engines like Canada geese, your nightmare scenario is about as likely as a return to population control by mass drowning. In the U.S., " Battista claimed, " animal control agencies no longer operate outside the scrutiny of public watchdogs and pets enjoy significantly higher status than in countries where culling and poisoning are accepted. " Yet, though the U.S. now kills only about a sixth as many homeless cats and dogs per year as 40 years ago, the U.S. still kills more than the whole of Europe, and more than India did at peak. " 'Community cats' is an appropriate term, " Battista continued, " for precisely the reason that the cats do belong where they are, not because we say so, but because the residents of the communities concerned say so. In Jacksonville, Florida, for example, free-roaming cats are trapped, neutered, vaccinated, microchipped and returned to their colonies by animal control officers, not just feral cat caregivers. If they come back into the shelter system, they are returned to the colony identified on their chip. Community satisfaction surveys run at 90% positive. Rather than cause deaths, " Battista said, " the 'community cat' solution in Jacksonville has seen a 50% reduction in shelter cat deaths, simply because neuter/return has been owned at a community level. " Added Best Friends chief executive and fellow cofounder Gregory Castle, " Why do you think it is that epidemiologists, who apparently use scientific methods, continue to buy into and promote anachronistic, fear-based ideas about zoonotic diseases being spread by cats? If there is any statistical evidence of this, it pales into insignificance compared to other, real public health threats. It would be better if they looked at facts rather than derive facts from terminology. " Epidemiologists comment Hoped F.X. Meslin of WHO, " If a human community accepts and partially even indirectly supports a population of feral spayed/neutered 'wild' cats, then those may be considered 'community owned,' rather than pests, as an integral part of that community's environment, as are red foxes in many suburban areas of western Europe. " But Centers for Disease Control Prevention rabies control chief Charles Rupprecht agreed " in large measure " that introducing the term " community cats " may increase apprehension that cats at large are a disease vector. " In practical terms 'feral' and 'community' are opposite ends of a length of string, " said Louisiana State University epidemiology professor emeritus Martin Hugh Jones. " I had no idea that Best Friends was so misguided, " said Texas A & M University professor Tam Garland, who advises the Department of Homeland Security about agricultural defense. " I completely agree with you, " Garland said, " regarding the problem this is going to bring down on all of us. It will change the dynamics of populations and result in a flurry of euthanasia, trapping and killing and a lot more panic about some diseases, such as rabies, " Garland predicted. " I completely agree with you on this one, " echoed medical transcriptionist and cat rescuer Judith Webster, of Vancouver, British Columbia, who has a foot in both the epidemiological and animal advocacy worlds. " If 'feral' cats become 'community' cats, " Webster said, " this would have serious implications for disease control, given the many viral diseases cats harbor, or have been found to catch and potentially spread. The term 'community' positions feral cats in a high-profile role in relation to likelihood of interaction with domestic animals and people. " 'Community cat' is terminology conducive to lumping abandoned pet cats and feral cats in the same category, " Webster added, " which is probably the single biggest problem in negative perceptions of feral cats among normal people, not including conservation biologists. The term 'feral cat' needs to be rigorously used, not be confused with abandoned pets. " In particular, Webster worried, to people outside the public health sector, " 'community cats' sounds so positive. Therefore, it might encourage dumping and abandonment. If the community is supposed to care about 'community cats,' why worry if your cat is outside at night, or gets lost? Why even look? Your cat will at worst join other community cats, indeed be free at last, and the community will take care of her. Also, calling them 'community cats' to me seems as if they are being presented as a positive and welcome addition to a city or environment. It seems to me that this is losing sight of the goal of feral cat management, to eradicate the population by attrition in the most humane way possible. " Alley Cat Allies chief executive Becky Robinson apparently learned that feral cats were to become " community cats " from ANIMAL PEOPLE. Robinson acknowledged the success of the Jacksonville program, but wondered whether the use of " community " would obscure the distinctions among true feral cats, outdoor pets, and strays. " Some established national groups, from the beginning of neuter/return in the U.S., " Robinson recalled, " wanted people to be forever responsible for colonies. Eventually caregiver and colony registration were advocated, requiring feeders and caregivers to be nothing less than owners, as if the cats were in their homes. We demonstrated and wrote about how some cats just live in an area, sometimes with a caregiver, but often not. Feral cats survive usually from our dumpsters and hunting small rodents. " What will become of the term " community cats " and what actual influence it may have remains to be seen. Putnam County, Florida cat rescuer Bonnie Carolin has suggested to Best Friends and ANIMAL PEOPLE that all of the positive connotations of " community " could be obtained, without running afoul of any history, by using the term " neighborhood cats " instead. Those who believe changing the names of cats might help could give it a try. But as virologist Charles H. Calisher told ANIMAL PEOPLE, " Redefining doesn't change anything in the real world. If cats are on the loose they are a community problem, " the dimensions of which may be debated but not denied. -- Merritt Clifton Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE P.O. Box 960 Clinton, WA 98236 Telephone: 360-579-2505 Fax: 360-579-2575 E-mail: anmlpepl Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org [ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year; for free sample, send address.] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.