Our family loves animals of all kinds, but have a bit of a problem with neighbors who feed feral cats. As with any wild animal, when the food supplies are abundant, feral cats have huge litters of kittens which eventually grow up and will also need to be fed.
A feral cat is a domestic cat that has turned “wild.” They may have once been house cats that were lost or abandoned, or were born in the wild. While some feral cats will learn to cautiously accept people who put out trays of food for them, most of the feral cats I’ve come across go to great lengths to avoid human contact.
While most of us don’t mind a few feral cats in the alley, when the feral cat population gets wildly out of control, they can become a serious environmental and health issue. Sad to say, I have some experience with this. Several year ago, one of my neighbors decided to feed a handful of feral cats that had recently turned up in our alley. Within a year, the feral cat population exploded to at least over 100 kittens and cats who were requiring nearly 40 pounds of food each week to survive. Once my neighbor decided that he couldn’t afford to feed the animals anymore, the animals start looking elsewhere for food.
In less than one summer, all the wild birds, squirrels, mice, and other tiny creatures found in our block were driven off or eaten. Once the food supply disappeared, the cats turned to eating their young or other ill or diseased feral cats who were too weak to defend themselves. We discovered severe cases of mange, a high percentage of blindness, distemper, and animals who were clearly starving to death. Feral cats were crawling beneath wood piles and crawl spaces to die, and the entire block reeked of cat feces and dead animals.
How to capture feral cats using a humane animal trap
The safest way to catch a feral cat is to use a humane small animal trap. These wire cages have a trap door that snaps shut when the animal places his feet on a metal platform that holds the bait. These traps do not injure the animal and allow you to transport him safely to the Humane Society or a TNR (trap, neuter, and return) animal rescue agency. Humane animal traps can be borrowed from your local Humane Society or animal shelter. For homeowners with a serious feral cat problem, it’s best just to purchase your own trap. Havahart makes terrific humane animal traps that range in price between $50-80. Havahart traps can be found in most discount department stores, farm stores, or large pet stores.
Starving cats, particular the kittens and their mamas, can usually be caught in a trap without the least bit of trouble. The older, more aggressive feral cats are a little more street smart and require a different strategy. These clever cats tend to walk around the outside of the cage for a few hours and will poke their paws through the wires to reach the food. This playing around will usually cause the trap to snap shut on it’s own. Once a feral cat hears the “clink” of the trap snapping shut, he will come to recognize that traps mean “danger” and no amount of tuna will bring it remotely close to the trap again.
For trapping these more elusive cats, the trap needs to disappear for a while, and then reappear a month later in a different part of the yard. What we discovered worked best was to wire the cage open and place the food inside. At first, the cat will play around the outside of the trap to see if anything happens and when it looks like things are safe, he’ll tentatively stretch a paw inside to trip the door. If he can grab the food and dash off with nothing happening, the next time he should walk directly inside the trap feeling pretty confident.
After a week of leaving the unset trap outside, the trap can be baited and “set” with fresh tuna.
Where to set the trap
Feral cats rarely will walk directly into the middle of a yard to check out food. They much prefer to skirt the fence line of the yard and the garage, or sneak around the shrubs where they are under cover. These are the best locations to set your humane animal trap. Don’t keep the trap in the same location though, it’s best to keep shifting it around.
A word of caution
Wild animals do not like being trapped, and should be let loose as soon as possible. I made it a practice to get these animals to the pound or TNR rescue agency within 2 hours of trapping. If this is not possible for you, then the animal should be placed in a cool shady place until you can transport it elsewhere.
Also worth keeping in mind is that people who feed feral cats will not appreciate that you are trapping them, even if the animals are starving to death and being trapped on your property. I got in the habit of placing the trap where my neighbor couldn’t see it, and played “stupid” when she wondered aloud what was happening to all the cats. Eventually one of her kids twigged on to the fact that it was me, and relations have been strained ever since.
But most importantly of all, before doing anything call the Humane Society to find out if trapping feral cats is OK. In our community, trespassing animals can be dealt with by the property owner. This is not the case in all cities which is why it’s important to check before buying a trap. Once we got the “all clear” from the Humane Society, we also let all the other neighbors know what we were doing and asked them to buy collars for their own house cats. This allowed us to quickly distinguish between someone’s pet and a stray. House cats see these traps like their own cat carriers and most will eagerly jump inside for chow, including our neighbor’s “Blackie” who happily let herself be “trapped with tuna” nearly 12 times in one week.
One or two feral cats in your neighborhood aren’t a problem, especially if you’ve been able to catch and neuter them before releasing them back into the neighborhood. However, when the feral cat population gets wildly out of control, trapping those dozens of starving animals with a humane small animal trap and bringing them to a rescue society is the best and kindest solution.
