Feral kittens are easy to tame. My mom is attempting to tame a full grown feral cat, which does use the litter box but otherwise lurks under her furniture. I know a couple of ladies who have accomplished this with a lot of patience. My husband is very good with feral cats.
These are all the descendents of thousands of years of domestication, they aren't wild animals any more than a cow or a chicken would be a wild animal if it got loose and wandered out into the woods, and the offspring wouldn't be wild either.
There are a lot of arguments in favor of letting them be.
1) Yes, they kill songbirds, but they also kill vermin and vermin carry diseases.
2) We've killed off the natural predators like wolves, foxes, coyotes, bears, and big cats, so they fill an ecological niche.
3) No species has ever been hunted to extinction by housecats gone wild. The ecosystem seems to remain in balance.
4) The only time these animals go "out of control" is when they have a food source. Well, what is that food source?
More than likely, a misguided person who feeds them but doesn't catch them to have them spayed or neutered. I've done this myself, before I was shown the error of my ways. As soon as you stop feeding them, they disperse.
Garbage? More likely the rats and mice that are eating the garbage. I don't know about you but I prefer cats to rats. |
