It has been a slow spring for trapping. We could say it is because we did such a great job last year, but it is really because we have gotten down to the most skittish cats (or clever, if you want to give them some credit). Every cat that is still unfixed on our list is a cat that has never entered a trap or has never even been in the yard (but we've seen in the utility easement and over the fence). We thought we would use this opportunity to fine tune the numbers and write up some information to go along with them.
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Keeping Track
The
ultimate goal of all of this work is the reduction and eventual
elimination of the feral cat population through sterilization. Of
course, it can be hard to tell if it is working without patience
and record keeping.
Every cat that we see gets put on our list, including the roaming males. Even if
they don't stick around, it is good to track them. The data
will balance itself out over time (this is the patience part). We have
decided to use a rolling two month attendance procedure and this is a brief description of the method:
We
start each month with an up-to-date list of the cats and for the next
30 days, the first time we see any cat, they get checked off as "Present,"
just like an attendance sheet at a school. This list exists for one
month. We add any new cats we see during the month to the list.
At
the start of the next month, we label any cat that we did not see as
"Not Seen" and reset all of the other cats. Again,
the first time we see any of cats in the next 30 days, they get marked as "Present." At the end
of this month, we go through the list. Any cat that had been labeled as
"Not Seen" the previous month and was still not seen this month gets moved to our
"Disappeared" section and removed from the total count of cats.
This process repeats itself every month and will help us track the long term efforts in population reduction. Every cat is subject to this procedure even if we only see it once. As soon as we see any cat, it will take at least 2 months for it to be removed from the count. Using this method, any cat that may have been moved to "Disappeared" can
always be reactivated as "Present" just in case they show up again.
Reading the Data
Our list is broken down into several categories of cats. The only cats counted in the chart are ones active in the attendance procedure. Any cat that has been moved to "Disappeared" is no longer counted in the total. This allows continued updating of the chart to show active population reduction (we hope) over time.
Fixed: These are cats that we have fixed or that have been fixed by other people. They are all ear-tipped which makes tracking them much easier. They include males and females because after they're fixed, we no longer care what gender they are.
Unfixed: These are cats that have not been fixed yet. Originally, we did not separate males and females in this category because there were so many. It can be difficult to tell the gender of a cat, and the only way for sure is to catch a glimpse of a male's...parts.
Unfixed Females: Once the unfixed population got small enough, we figured that we could separate them by sex. These remaining unfixed females are the top priority targets. Every new cat we see gets put in to this category until we can catch a glimpse of any male parts. Our assumption is that new cats we see would more likely be roaming males, but we aren't about to miss a chance to target an unfixed female.
Unfixed Males: Again, once the unfixed population got small enough, we were able to track the sex of the cats. These are males that have been around since we started the process and we have clearly seen their reproductive organs.
Roaming Males: Male feral cats roam to spread their seed to other colonies. These are cats that showed up this spring and that have flashed us their balls (almost proudly sometimes). Some of these males may decide to stay in the colony and we will move them to the "Unfixed Males" category in the future. If we trap any of these roaming males, they get put into the "Fixed" category and even if they wander off after that, they are still subject to the two month attendance procedure.
The Take Away
We hope you can see that this process is not a fast one, and that is probably the most difficult part of this. We have the same desire as the other members of the community, and that is the eventual elimination of the colony. We would be lying if we said that we had never considered euthanizing some of these cats, at least to decrease the population to a more manageable size. The organizations we work with make TNR a much more affordable option, and we would be lying again if we said money wasn't a consideration. We thank them and we thank you for understanding the situation. These cats have already been sentenced to an eventual terrible death to things like disease, injuries, and predators. The true goal is to prevent any offspring they would have from enduring the same, as well as not having them continue their legacy as a community nuisance.
