CHAPTER THREE
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
—Mark Twain
On a sunny spring Saturday in 1919, an eleven-year-old boy named Roger Tory Peterson spotted a yellow bird in a park in Jamestown, New York, a thriving burg in the far southwestern corner of the Empire State. Set along the banks of the Chadakoin River, Jamestown was home to several woolen mills in the early days of its settlement. By the turn of the nineteenth century, it had become known as the Furniture Capital of the World—thanks to abundant timber and the presence of many Swedish immigrants who arrived with fine craftsmanship skills. Though the forests of oak, maple, and white pine surrounding Jamestown were aggressively logged to satisfy the appetites of the furniture factories along the Chadakoin’s banks, the woods of the Hundred Acre Lot—a neighborhood park on the south side of Jamestown—were spared.
That Saturday morning—a morning that many herald as the birth of bird-watching in America—young Roger accompanied his seventh-grade teacher, Blanche Hornbeck, and some fellow students on a field trip to the Hundred Acre Lot. Miss Hornbeck had formed a Junior Audubon Club, whose members met after school to study Audubon Society educational leaflets and try their hands at copying bird illustrations from E. H. Eaton’s two-volume Birds of New York State. The Hundred Acre Lot had recently been purchased by the city of Jamestown for $10, in part through pennies raised from students. Strolling through the park, Roger and a friend came upon a bird they identified as a flicker (now known as the Northern Flicker, Colaptes auratus) on the trunk of a tree, an experience that would prove life changing. Peterson would later write:
Its head was tucked under its wing coverts. It was probably exhausted from migration, but we thought it was dead. We stood and stared at it for a while, examining its beautiful plumage. When I reached out to touch its back it exploded with life—a stunning sight, flying away with its golden underwings and the red crescent on its nape—I can see it now—the way it was transformed from what we thought was death into intense life. I was tremendously excited with the feeling which I have carried ever since, of the intensity of a bird’s life, and its apparent freedom, with this wonderful ability to fly.1
A perhaps equally propitious moment: during one afterschool session of copying bird illustrations, Peterson painted a watercolor of a Blue Jay; he later would recall that from that moment on, he wanted to be a bird painter.
By all accounts, Peterson’s youth was not easy. There was never quite enough money for his family to make ends meet, and his father, a first generation Swede who had begun working at age ten, had limited patience for his son’s burgeoning naturalist impulses. How would watching birds and collecting butterflies ever put food on the table? Perhaps it was a nod to his father’s pragmatic world view that brought Roger to the National Furniture Company to paint not birds, but Chinese-inspired designs on lacquered cabinets. Fortunately, one of his managers saw the young man’s promise and encouraged him to attend art school. In 1927 Peterson left Jamestown for New York City, where he attended classes at the Art Students League and eventually the National Academy of Design. While polishing his drawing and painting skills (and still decorating furniture to pay his bills), Peterson was also able to spend time at the American Museum of Natural History, where he began to receive his first formal ornithological training. In 1931 he moved to the Boston area, where he took on a teaching position at the Rivers School, a prestigious boys’ academy. This provided his first opportunity to share his love of bird-watching with students. A dedicated teacher by day, Peterson made time to paint and write about birds—a passion that consumed him (fig. 3.1). His off-hours efforts resulted in a first book, A Field Guide to the Birds, which would have such an impact it would change the way people experienced the natural world. When the richly illustrated manuscript made the rounds with a literary agent, four publishing houses turned it down. But Boston-based Houghton Mifflin took a gamble after Peterson visited in person with his work. The initial print run in 1934 of 2,000 copies sold out in less than a month—no small feat for a book on birds during the depths of the Great Depression. (The Peterson Field Guides series has gone on to sell more than 7 million books, many of which are still in print today.) In his unassuming way, Roger Tory Peterson had created a whole new category of nature book—the field guide—a genre that would democratize birding for Americans and set the stage for the ecological awakening in the mid-twentieth century buttressed by the likes of Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson.
Just as Peterson introduced innovations in field guides that benefited countless bird-watchers, a mixed-breed female tabby cat in Arizona named Tardar Sauce helped blaze new trails of Internet inanity, confirming YouTube as the greatest place to waste time online. Tardar Sauce is better known as “Grumpy Cat” (fig. 3.2). The edges of the cat’s mouth are pulled forever downward, giving the animal its eponymous dour expression, which is actually believed to be the result of feline dwarfism and an underbite. Since her online debut in 2012, Tardar Sauce—with a bit of help from her owner and a manager—has catapulted into the mainstream, earning front-page and cover stories in such publications as the Wall Street Journal and New York magazine and a slot with Anderson Cooper, not to mention in excess of 8.5 million “likes” on Facebook. What did Grumpy Cat do to gather such acclaim? In one video clip she lies on her back. In another she lies on her stomach. In a third she yawns. Thus far Grumpy and her entourage have taken her notoriety beyond various social-media properties and parlayed her trademark frown into a cable-TV movie, two best-selling books, and an iced-coffee beverage named, of course, Grumppuccino.
Grumpy’s success underscores the fact that, as a people, Americans have a tremendous love and fascination for cats. The only thing we may love more than cats is online memes that highlight our love of cats. Not that long ago, however, cats were much less likely to be near our hearts, let alone inside our homes. As noted in chapter 2, the domestic cat’s relationship with humans has evolved over 10,000 years, a long and not always amiable history. We have loved and worshiped cats, hated and condemned them. We have used them as pest-control experts and have placed them near the center of our lives. The cat’s high status in ancient Egyptian culture is well documented. Egyptian cats likely earned human esteem in the same way their Victorian counterparts did: by reducing the vermin populations around granaries and vanquishing the occasional cobra. Records suggest that killing a cat was an offense punishable by death. The goddess Bastet, who was often represented as a domestic cat, was worshiped as a symbol of fertility; at festivals celebrated in her name, hundreds of thousands of cats were sacrificed, mummified, and buried. The idea of cats as figures of feminine lust has persisted, as a listen to the Rolling Stones’ “Stray Cat Blues” will attest.
In Europe by the Middle Ages, the status of cats had taken a decided turn for the worse. Closely associated with witches and Satan (thanks to their nocturnal inclinations), felines were hunted mercilessly. In the fifteenth century, the Belgian town of Ypres took the revulsion of cats to a new level, mounting a feline festival—more an anti-festival—that culminated with the town jester flinging live animals from a belfry. This festival continued until 1817.
By the dawn of the twentieth century, cats were no longer considered agents of evil. But in the United States at the time, their role was that of a worker, rather than a companion. Farmers and other rural dwellers kept felines around to keep down populations of mice, rats, and other vermin. (It must be remembered that in 1900 a majority of Americans still lived in rural areas.) They were unlikely to set up a kitty bed for Tabby by the stove or in the corner of the bedroom; she bedded down in the barn or maybe in a box on the porch and, beyond the occasional saucer of milk or invitation to sit by the hearth, fended largely for herself. But social changes were coming that would bring cats inside and entwine them more and more tightly around our lives.
The years surrounding the beginning of the twentieth century marked a human exodus from rural settings and small towns to America’s cities, as tens of millions were drawn by the availability of industrial jobs. Most urban immigrants found themselves living in cramped apartments or tenements; there was hardly enough room for a family, let alone pets, especially as the need for controlling varmints was less pressing in a decidedly nonagricultural setting, though the tenements certainly had no shortage of rodent inhabitants. Several practical considerations beyond space impeded the adoption of domestic cats into urban homes for several decades: First, there was food. Cats need a high-protein diet, and without the ability to access the outdoors and hunt, they would come up short on meat; few families at the time could afford additional protein sources for their animals. Lack of outdoor access created a second problem. Assuming your kitty could get enough to eat, where was she going to defecate and urinate? Kitty litter had yet to be created, and very few urbanites would be willing to endure the mess and stink of cat feces and urine in tight quarters. The threat of too many cats was a third obstacle to apartment-dwelling cats. Practical spaying and neutering techniques for pets did not come along until the 1930s. Apartment dwellers with a female cat in heat found themselves either with a very unhappy animal or, if they kept a male cat (or another male was in the building and not locked away), with a boatload of cats. Cats average three litters a year; the average number of kittens in each litter is four to six. Kittens can come into estrus as early as four months after being born, so the numbers of cats can multiply very quickly!
This is not to say that cats were strangers to America’s cities. Unlike dogs, which were often kept as pets earlier in the twentieth century, cats had a more ambiguous position in urban households; Katherine Grier described them as independent contractors in her informative book Pets in America: A History. They were prized as ratcatchers, especially around urban stables, where there was feed (and hence, vermin), but generally not full-time members of the household for the reasons highlighted above. There were exceptions, of course; Mark Twain loved cats and was sometimes spied walking about with one of his cats—named Lazy—draped around his neck like a stole. As public concern shifted to order and cleanliness, the numbers of “tramp cats” in cities became problematic. Free-ranging cats were seen as carriers of disease and hence a public-health threat and were killed off in large numbers. Concern over such draconian methods led some citizens to seek more gentle means of control. The Animal Rescue League of Boston and the Bide-a-Wee Home in New York championed adoption programs for stray cats and dogs, as well as more humane methods of euthanasia.
Killing animals was not on Roger Tory Peterson’s agenda as he set out to create his field guides. In this respect, he differed significantly from his literary forebear John James Audubon, whose Birds of America was released over eleven years, from 1827 to 1838. Though both books shared the topic of American birds, the similarities stop there. The Birds of America is not exactly compact; the original printing measured more than three feet tall by over two feet wide! Nor was it economically priced; the first set cost $870 in 1830’s U.S. dollars (that would be close to $60,000 in 2015 U.S. dollars). Conversely, the 1934 edition of the very portable A Field Guide to the Birds retailed for $2.75 (fig. 3.3). But it is in its content that Peterson’s work most dramatically differed from that of Audubon and other predecessors. These earlier bird portraitists created beautiful, even resplendent likenesses of the birds by “posing” birds they had shot, using wires and other apparatus. Indeed, for many enthusiasts up until the early twentieth century, birding could be equated with hunting. Elliot Coues, an eminent American ornithologist of the 1870s, provided the following advice to prospective bird-watchers: “The double barreled shotgun is your main reliance. Get the best one you can afford for your particular purpose which is the destruction of small birds with the least possible damage to their plumage. Begin by shooting every bird you can.”2
Peterson’s paintings were competent enough, but what made them special was the manner in which they highlighted the telltale markings of each species—its “field marks”—so it could be easily differentiated from similar species and identified from a distance. The field marks—say the pink bill, the white patch on front of face and the variable black bars on belly of the Greater White-fronted Goose—were called out with arrows. Instead of relying upon a firearm to connect with birds, amateur naturalists could carry a Peterson field guide and a pair of binoculars. They became observers, rather than hunters. Bird-watching with binoculars could be done almost anywhere and anytime.
The inspiration for Peterson’s breakthrough idea did not come from the New York art establishment or the Boston bluebloods of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, of which Peterson was a member (at the time one of the country’s most elite birding groups). Instead, it came from a book that he had devoured as a young boy, Two Little Savages, by Ernest Thompson Seton. Written in 1903, the book chronicled the adventures of Yan and Sam, two Canadian boys, who would steal away to the woods as often as their schedules would permit and imagine how the native peoples would have lived. Peterson identified with Yan. In a chapter entitled “How Yan Knew the Ducks from Afar,” the protagonist identified a prominent shortcoming of the birding literature available at the turn of the century—and, for that matter, in 1933:
He found lots of difficulties and no one to help him, but he kept on and on … and made notes, and when he learned anything new he froze on to it like grim death. By and by he got a book that was some help, but not much. It told about some of the birds as if you had them in your hand. But this heroic youth only saw them at a distance and was struck. One day he saw a wild Duck on a pond so far away he could only see some spots of colour, but he made a sketch of it, and later he found out from that rough sketch that it was a Whistler, and then this wonderful boy had an idea. All the Ducks are different; all have little blots and streaks that are their labels, or like the uniform of soldiers. “Now, if I can put their uniforms down on paper I’ll know the Ducks as soon as I see them on a pond a long way off.”3
Peterson frequently acknowledged the impact of Yan’s approach to bird identification; in fact he cited it in the introductions to the 1934, 1939, and 1947 editions of his Field Guide to the Birds.
“When Roger Tory Peterson showed people what to look for to identify a Cape May Warbler, he made bird watching something that the general populous could do,” Bill Thompson, editor and publisher of Bird Watcher’s Digest, shared. “You didn’t need a shotgun anymore. Just about anyone could get their hands on a Peterson guide. With the field guide, you weren’t looking at just a bird anymore. It was a Blue Jay. The field guide also made it possible for a large community of bird-watchers to develop. Like the telephone or rural Internet, it connected people.”4
Noble Proctor, the 2013 recipient of the American Birding Association’s Roger Tory Peterson Award for Promoting the Cause of Birding, believed that Peterson’s field guides are responsible for the rise of the green movement:
By making Americans aware of birds, the field guides opened up our environmental thinking. There were more types of birds than crows, robins and “little brown ones.” The guide encouraged a closer look by rewarding it. They turned awareness into knowledge. Before you can go out and save anything, you have to know what it is. Knowing the names of things became an essential step toward involvement.5
Every movement needs a manifesto, and A Field Guide to the Birds was the catalyst that propelled American bird-watching forward. A number of other factors coalesced to transform and popularize the pastime of birding. One was the increasing availability of quality optical equipment. At the time of the release of the first field guide, many birders were using field glasses that were castoffs from military personnel in the family. Advances in optics technology—some acquired from Germany during the occupation after the war—put better binoculars and sighting scopes in birders’ hands at a much more affordable price. Larger cultural and economic factors that came to bear on post–World War II America also abetted our growing passion for birds. With automobiles more accessible to the working class than ever before, American families flocked away from the cities to the suburbs. In the suburbs, people had yards, where they could toss a football, barbecue hamburgers, and hang bird feeders. Thanks to the general prosperity and increase in standards of living that many Americans experienced in the 1950s, people of more modest means had more leisure time at their disposal than ever before—time to pursue hobbies like birding. And they had the automobiles to transport them farther and farther afield.
Why, the non-birder may ask, all the fuss? What’s the appeal of birds? Bill Thompson has contemplated that very question:
Is it their dazzling plumages? Is it their ethereal, musical songs? How about their courtship rituals and devotion to mate and offspring? These are all admirable explanations for our love of birds, but I think it’s even more simple than that. After all, birds have been doing something for eons that humans have only figured out in the past 100 years—flying. It’s the freedom, the power of the ability to fly that draws us most to birds. They are not bound, as we are, to the ground. Birds ignore the bonds of gravity, and we wish that we could, too. And so we watch birds in wonder and seek them out wherever they occur.6
Flight allows some species to cover thousands of miles every year during their biannual migrations. Perhaps it is these migrations that mesmerize and capture the imaginations of millions of dedicated bird-watchers. Migrations can span hemispheres, some species flying almost pole to pole, sometimes in flocks of tens of thousands of individuals, and some flying only at night to avoid predators. And despite such long-distance flights, every year they can return to within a few hundred yards of the same wintering and breeding territory they used the previous year. Billions of individual living torpedoes of feathers move every spring and fall—through the air—all over the world. These animals connect our cultures, our countries, and our continents in ways we do not completely understand. They move from tropical jungles to temperate and boreal forests to grasslands, deserts, marshes, and backyards. These remarkable voyagers, whether hawks, rails, shorebirds, or songbirds, are the ultimate travelers, seemingly always on the go, with no luggage, moving only to survive, stopping occasionally to refuel, fleetingly captured by the scanning binoculars and straining necks of bird-watchers seeking to experience this mysterious behavior.
As exotic as birds can be, it is their commonness that makes our connection with them so easy. Observing birds, in our yards or in faraway lands, connects us to wild nature—a connection that is increasingly frayed in modern society. Richard Louv coined the phrase “nature-deficit disorder” to describe Americans’—especially children’s—growing disengagement with the natural world and the resulting range of behavioral problems, including attention disorders, anxiety, and depression. Bird-watching engages one’s senses and one’s intellect in the act of identification; you must concentrate, look, and listen, and then process the stimuli gathered to understand what bird you are observing. In a way, every identification poses a challenge, a puzzle, a problem to solve. Every new species encountered promotes a hypothesis-testing exercise. Birding also satisfies the very human desire to gather and save—and to compete to see who can gather the most. It can be a game. In the late 1800s this gathering took the form of shooting and stuffing specimens. Today it finds its expression in the life list, the race to announce on Twitter the sighting and location of a rare species or to compile the largest list on eBird, a novel online checklist program for the birding community.
Birders have often been dismissed as eccentric, if not slightly daft, by the popular culture; fans of The Beverly Hillbillies may recall the character Miss Jane Hathaway, ever clad in tweeds. Even the cast of Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson could not make birding seem hip in the 2011 comedy The Big Year; perhaps the pastime simply does not translate well to the screen. Are birders truly unconventional outcasts, fringe characters not to be taken seriously? A 2011 survey conducted by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) on the economic impact of bird-watching revealed that whether they are serious birders or casual bird-watchers, they are much more mainstream than most would think. In fact, they probably are your next-door neighbors, or at least those living just a few doors down. The survey concluded that there are some 47 million active birders over the age of sixteen in the United States. The USFWS identifies birders as individuals who have either closely observed or tried to identify birds around the home or taken a trip one mile or more from home for the primary purpose of observing birds. Who are all these millions of bird enthusiasts? Eighty-eight percent—or 41 million—are backyard bird-watchers, folks who might hang a few feeders or a chunk of suet outside and keep a field guide on the breakfast nook table. The remaining 6 million, plus 12 million of the casual birders, take trips away from home to view birds. Birders skew a little older in age and tend to have a higher income and a higher level of education than the average American, are slightly more likely to be female, and are much more likely to be white. Rural residents are more likely to be birders than urban residents (on a per capita basis). People living in southern states are more likely to be birders than their fellow Americans in the Midwest, the Northeast, and the West.
A number of groups provide a sense of community for America’s birders and bird-watchers. There are the American Birding Association, with approximately 12,000 members; the American Bird Conservancy, 10,000 members; the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, with about 70,000 members; and the National Audubon Society, with over 464 state chapters and 450,000 members across the United States. Then there are scores of other state-specific Audubon organizations not affiliated with National Audubon. National Audubon’s activities go far beyond organizing bird-watching outings. Members partake in grassroots activism and restoration activities and conduct “citizen science,” most notably through the annual Christmas Bird Count. The organization also funds habitat protection, employs scientists and lobbyists to shape and institute conservation plans, and strives to educate the population through a variety of programs ranging from Audubon centers to Audubon magazine. National Audubon spent close to $74 million in 2014 to support conservation efforts, and garnered protection for almost 120 million acres of habitat.
The pastime of bird-watching has emerged as an economic as well as a political force. In 2011 American birders spent an estimated $15 billion on trips (food, lodging, transportation) and $26 billion on equipment (binoculars, cameras, camping gear). These expenditures amounted to a total industry output—the so-called ripple effect on the economy—of $107 billion.
As an economic engine, cats are no slouch either. Just as new products and technologies like Peterson’s field guides and improved optics helped foster a culture of bird-watchers in America, modern developments such as canned pet food (and refrigerators to keep it fresh), as well as advances in other food products, made it easier and more cost-effective for people of modest means to take a cat into their home. The “invention” of kitty litter in the late 1940s—basically Fuller’s earth, a type of clay that proved perfectly suited for soaking up the ammonia scent of cat pee—made keeping cats inside a much more palatable venture. Improvements in spaying and neutering procedures, prompted in part by the veterinary industry’s increasing focus on smaller animals, also made keeping cats inside a more pleasing and manageable prospect.
Today, well into the twenty-first century, cat ownership has reached an all-time high in the United States, and an estimated 90 million pet cats live in up to 46 million American homes. According to the Pet Food Institute, cat food sales in the United States increased from $4.2 billion to $6.7 billion between 2000 and 2013, an increase of over 50 percent. Societal trends have contributed to the explosion of cat ownership. We are now a much more urban society, with 80.7 percent of the population (more than 249 million people) living in or near cities. This has distanced us from wild animals and their natural world—bringing pets into our homes satisfies the inner need of people to connect to animals. The United States has also seen an increase in one-person households, from 17 percent of all households in 1970 to 27 percent (nearly 32 million individuals) in 2012. Cats provide companionship for people living alone, without the need for walking or pooper-scooping.
“I believe that part of the allure of cats as companion animals is the fact that they have a bit of wildness in them,” mused Sharon Harmon, president and CEO of the Oregon Humane Society. “Cats aren’t quite tame. They’re only one generation away from being in a wild state. We embrace that wildness.”7 Cat owners are happy to elaborate on why they like to have cats in their lives, as a cursory review of the website Catster revealed:
•They are better alarms than any snooze button or clock will ever be.
•They give you someone to talk to. Sometimes they even listen.
•They can eat the same thing every day and not complain.
•You can talk like a baby and not feel silly.
•You don’t have to take them outside to do their business.
•They know when you need a little extra cuddle.
•They can stay home alone all day and the house will be fine.
•They can turn almost anything into a toy.
•They love you unconditionally … as long as you feed them.
•How they fly through the air and twist and do crazy acrobatic moves to catch a toy.
•Cats are the best work distraction ever.
•And of course … laser pointers.8
There’s also evidence that cats contribute to the well-being, both physical and psychological, of their owners. Feline company has been shown to lower blood pressure and improve the moods of some people. Pets (cats and dogs) have been used therapeutically for children with disabilities (most notably through a program called Pets As Therapy, or PAT). It is heartwarming to watch the faces of children who are unwilling to talk to or be touched by people light up around cats, both speaking to their feline companions and stroking their soft fur.
While “owned” cats like Tardar Sauce—and even others with fewer than 8.5 million likes—lead a fairly cosseted life indoors, the estimated 60 to 100 million cats in America that are “unowned” and live outside endure a bleak existence that puts them on a collision course with our wild birds, one that seldom ends well for the birds. Unowned cats without veterinary care are prone to disease (including feline leukemia, renal failure, feline panleukopenia, plague, rabies, and toxoplasmosis, as we will explore later). They are vulnerable to predation by other animals, especially Coyotes and, to a lesser extent, eagles, owls, foxes, and Raccoons. And they are frequently hit by cars—the most common cause of demise in outside cats. Such are the hazards if they survive to adulthood, but estimates suggest that 50 to 75 percent of kittens born outdoors do not, dying from exposure, parasites, and disease. If they do reach adulthood, the life expectancy of an outside cat without caregivers providing regular feeding, water, and sometimes makeshift shelter is two years. Outside cats that receive such care have a much longer life span, averaging ten years. The average life span of an inside cat is thirteen to seventeen years, depending on the breed.
It is not possible to monitor the general happiness of an outside cat, but we do have a general idea of these animals’ habits. Some—especially truly feral animals—are unsocialized and reject any interaction with humans. Others—strays that have been lost or abandoned—will seek out human contact. Outside cats that rely on humans in part for their sustenance tend to congregate in groups or colonies. Such colonies are often anchored around female kinship; males, as well as animals that do not rely on human assistance, tend to be more solitary. The day-to-day activities among outside cats are largely dictated by the availability of food. On the Japanese island of Ainoshima, for example, where cats had access to reliable food sources from the island’s refuse pits, animals were observed to rest up to nineteen hours a day. In South Australia, where the climate is quite arid and food is scarce, some free-ranging cats were constantly on the move, ranging up to fifty square miles. Outside cats in an American suburb might “make the rounds” from porch to porch where food has been provided by interested humans, grabbing a finch or field mouse as opportunities arise. Like their wild brethren, outside cats are most active in lowlight hours, particularly at dusk and dawn. This is especially true of outside felines living in urban or suburban settings, as the animals may prefer to avoid human confrontations.
Our relationship with outside cats has always had its complexities. Today it even extends to how we label them. A white paper by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) points out that in the scientific literature on the topic there are more than thirty terms used to describe outside cats, ranging from “feral” and “invasive” to “pet” and “house cat.” How we define them is influenced by sociological as well as biological constructs: what their ownership status is as well as where they spend their time. The term “feral” is often used as a catchall for outside cats, though it technically should apply only to animals that have completely returned to the wild, have no reliance upon humans for any sustenance or shelter, and reject any interaction with humans. Other descriptors for outside cats encountered in an urban or suburban environment include “semi-owned,” “street,” “stray,” “colony,” and “neighborhood,” all of which imply a level of human dependence and thus are more accurate. The waters are further muddied by the fact that many “house” or “pet” or “owned” cats are allowed to wander outside, some for as long they wish. The International Companion Animal Management Coalition recognizes three categories of human-cat relationships: owned, semi-owned, and un-owned. For the purposes of this book, the term “free-ranging” seems most appropriate to refer to any cat that spends at least some time outdoors, as it describes the animal’s ability to move about as it wishes, without any assumptions about its interaction—or lack thereof—with humans.
Whatever you call free-ranging cats, their number is growing in America, and cat abandonment is a significant contributing factor. Abandonment is defined in the state of New York under Statute 355 of the New York Agriculture and Markets Law, for example, as follows:
A person being the owner or possessor, or having charge or custody of an animal, who abandons such animal, or leaves it to die in a street, road or public place, or who allows such animal, if it becomes disabled, to lie in a public street, road or public place more than three hours after he receives notice that it is left disabled, is guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment for not more than one year, or by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or by both.9
There is no way to accurately assess the number of animal abandonments—people do not tend to boast about such insidious (and in many jurisdictions criminal) behavior—but the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) reports that 6 to 8 million companion animals (mostly cats and dogs) enter shelters nationwide every year. They are released in parks, at highway rest stops, on university campuses and military bases, or are simply left behind in apartments or houses as their owners move on. According to a study conducted by the National Council on Pet Population and Policy, cats are abandoned for a variety of reasons, including there being too many in a house; allergies; moving; cost of pet maintenance; landlord issues; failure to find homes for a litter; house soiling; personal problems; inadequate facilities; and a cat that does not get along with other pets. Most abandoners probably think that cats can fend for themselves. Most cannot. Because of the nature of the act of abandonment—often under the cover of night or in an isolated place—and the fact that cats are unable to testify on their own behalf, most offenses go unpunished. In his short story “The Good Work of Chickens,” Richard Brautigan conceived an intriguing retribution for the cruelty of abandoners. After witnessing a dog being deserted by its owners at a rest stop, the story’s narrator traces the driver’s license plate and commissions a dump truck to deliver a ton of chicken shit to the deserter’s front porch.
Free-ranging cats arouse strong and conflicting responses in the people they move among. Some focus on the animals’ more disruptive behaviors, such as digging, defecating, and spraying around non-owners’ homes, meowing and fighting when females are in estrus, and preying upon birds drawn to bird feeders.
But others take a passionate and committed interest in free-ranging cats. These people—sometimes referred to as colony caretakers—provide food and water for the animals, occasionally shelter them, and will sometimes facilitate veterinary care for the cats (including spaying and neutering), often paying for a vet’s services out of their own pockets. Some care takes place in an ad hoc manner, with people occasionally placing a dish of table scraps or cat food in the yard of their apartment complex or out behind their shed. Others act in accordance with the strictures of a more formalized regimen of care, dictated by one of the hundreds of nonprofit organizations that have sprung up in recent years to assist free-ranging cats. Regardless of the level and type of care provided, most caretakers act out of genuine compassion for sentient creatures that they feel have received a raw deal in this life.
One such nonprofit, Alley Cat Allies, bills itself as “the only national advocacy organization dedicated to the protection and humane treatment of cats.” There are other such organizations, but Alley Cat Allies is certainly one of the most vocal and the best funded. Among its activities, the organization advocates for pounds and shelters to keep public records of animal intakes and kill rates (for greater accountability); mobilizes and educates the public to end the killing of cats and to protect and improve their lives; and provides a clearinghouse of information for caregivers of free-ranging animals. Alley Cat Allies is not an isolated grassroots organization; it boasts a network of 500,000 supporters and is a loud and frequently strident voice on issues concerning the welfare of free-ranging cats, with an estimated annual budget of $5 million. Its members are committed to and passionate in their beliefs. Regrettably, many of their efforts fail to recognize at least two realities: enabling cats to roam freely outside (1) shortens the lives of a vast number of birds, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, as well as the cats themselves, and (2) allows outdoor cats to spread disease that impacts not only wildlife but also humans. These points are discussed in depth in chapters 4 and 5.
It is not easy to find cat caretakers who will speak about their endeavors or introduce outsiders to their colonies. Organizations are loath to share members’ identities, perhaps wary of an “outing” of sorts or some kind of retribution. Caretakers themselves, if identified, often are an equally furtive lot; one has the sense that they fear outsiders will attempt to harm the members of their colony, thus it is best to keep their location a secret. One organization based in Toronto, Animal Equity, has created profiles of several colony caretakers in the region. These portrayals, from the organization’s website, shed light on caretakers and their motivations:
Robin S.
Robin is well known among cat rescuers, feral cat colony caretakers and cat lovers in Toronto. For the last 7 years, Robin has rescued many feral/stray cats and brought them to safe and warm forever homes. Cat colony maintenance requires a lot more commitment than most would imagine. Robin says that every day, including Christmas, she visits her colonies to feed the feral cats who depend solely on her for their survival. Sometimes colony caretakers face harassment by people who do not like feral cats in their neighborhood. To minimize conflict, Robin waits until the cats finish their meals so she can bring the empty dishes home to reduce clutter. The car trunk is always filled with several bags of dishes waiting to be cleaned. More frustrating than people’s unkindness is the sheer number of cats helplessly roaming outside. Most of these cats were once somebody’s companion but were abandoned or lost. Robin says that unless people spay/neuter all their cats and exercise responsible pet ownership, the feral/stray cat overpopulation problem will continue to grow.
“I don’t want to be the person who turns away,” Robin says. “I can’t help every situation in the world but for me I just try to save every cat that I can. This is what I can do with my skills, with my time, with my energy and I can make a difference. I see a difference in the lives of those cats.”10
Helder D.
Every morning before work, Helder visits five cat colonies to feed and water the feral cats. (He’s been doing so for five years.) This all began on a cold winter morning, with the discovery of one homeless kitten. On the previous evening, the kitten got soaked in the rain. The temperature dropped during the night, so the kitten sought shelter in the seat of an abandoned car. In the morning, Helder discovered the kitten frozen to the seat of the car. Since that day, rain or shine, Helder diligently attends what has grown to five colonies to provide food, water, shelter and love for generations of feral and abandoned cats. He also traps the colony cats so they can be either spayed or neutered to help slowly reduce the colony population. For abandoned cats that have been forgotten by everyone else, Helder and his five colonies are the final refuge.
“I am hoping that a lot of people out there have the heart to join the cause. Call the Toronto Humane Society, call Toronto Street Cats … go in there and change the cages and feed the cats, whatever the case may be. Give them a hand and the world would be a much better place to live in.”11
Francesca C.
Working from her garage turned recovery center, Francesca specializes in socializing abandoned and feral kittens. Here’s the problem: non-spayed abandoned cats quickly become pregnant. Suddenly you’ve got one abandoned cat and half a dozen feral kittens with no human contact. Although they won’t last long on the streets, they can be difficult to put up for adoption with no human contact. So Francesca hosts the cats and kittens in her garage where, in addition to tending to their basic needs, she also provides much needed love and socialization. This helps greatly to ease the transition from life on the streets to the warmth of their forever homes. Francesca has rescued and cared for many feral cats in York region. She is also a member of York Region Change for Ferals, an initiative to raise awareness, funds, and support for feral cats and those who care for them.
“You have to be compassionate to these living creatures because we are not the only ones living on this planet. We share this planet. Therefore, we need to work all together and make the best of it.”12
Make no bones about it: people who care for free-ranging cats are well intentioned. They give generously of their time (and often of their pocketbooks) to care for creatures that many of us have chosen to ignore or, at worst, have intentionally and callously cast aside. To outside-cat advocates, the rights of the individual animal—each kitten, momma, or tom—are paramount. They want the cats to live, outside if that is the only option, and achieve the best level of “happiness” possible. They acknowledge that the problem begins with humans, and hope to undo a portion of the harm that some of our species have inflicted upon these animals.
Unfortunately, in their advocacy for outside cats, colony caretakers (and the organizations that support them) fail to take fully into consideration the health of the overall ecosystem and the rights of wild animals. Cats are opportunistic predators by nature. If given a chance to kill a bird or other small animal, most cats will take it. That is just the way cats are made. Maybe this chance arises once a day or once a week, and maybe they are successful only one-quarter of the time. But the fatalities add up to literally billions of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals a year, which is enough to impact the well-being of whole species. Many cat advocates will aggressively contest the damage that free-ranging felines inflict upon bird populations. They will likewise deny the diseases that free-ranging cats spread to other mammals and even humans. But their hearsay and denials pale in the light of evidence of cat impacts on islands and the emerging hard science on their impacts on mainlands.