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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spotte, Stephen.
Free-ranging cats : behavior, ecology, management / Stephen Spotte.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-88401-0 (cloth)
1. Feral cats. I. Title.
SF450.S66 2014
636.8–dc23
2014013795
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Cover image: Two Stray Cats on Garbage Bins. © Vicspacewalker | Dreamstime.com
1 2014
To Puddy, Tigger, Miss Sniff, Wilkins, Beavis, and Jinx
You enriched my life
The dog is humankind's obsequious, slavering companion ever sensitive to its master's moods and desires. The cat is ambiguous, irresolute, indifferent to its owner, if indeed any human who co-habits with a cat can be called that. Many of my cats have been memorable, perhaps none moreso than Miss Sniff, who adopted me when I lived on a Connecticut farm. It happened like this. One night in late autumn I heard a noise outside and opened the door. In walked an ugly, leggy, calico cat. She had the triangular head and blank stare of a praying mantis, and her nose was in the air mimicking a sort of feline royalty. With startling arrogance she jumped onto the couch and made one end of it hers. And so I named her Miss Sniff.
For months my barn had been plagued by rats. Their excavations were everywhere, around the perimeter of the building and even deep into the clay floors of the horse stalls. Nothing I tried could eradicate them. They ignored traps, snickered at poisoned grain, shouldered aside the barn cats and ate the food from their bowl. Some, bored with the furtive life, lounged brazenly outside their burrows in full sunlight.
That first night I fed Miss Sniff and eased her out the door. She greeted me the next morning with a freshly killed rat, a large shaggy beast of frightening proportions. Female cats without kittens to raise often bring their prey home, laying it out in a convenient place and giving little churring calls to their humans. Paul Leyhausen (1979: 88–89) wrote: “The important thing for the cat is … not the praise but the fact that the human serving as ‘deputy kitten’ actually goes to the prey it has brought home, just as a kitten thus coaxed does.” I have no idea if Leyhausen's interpretation is true, but I nonetheless congratulated Miss Sniff, gave her a pat, and every morning thereafter she presented me with a dead rat. Within a few weeks she had caught them all. In retrospect I realize how mere praise was a paltry reward, and to express proper gratitude I should have sat down on the porch steps and eaten the rats in front of her. At least one or two simply to be polite.
The common cat is the most widespread terrestrial carnivoran on Earth, occupying locations from 55°N to 52°S and climatic zones ranging from subantarctic islands to deserts and equatorial rainforests (Konecny 1987a). This is possible because few carnivorans except possibly the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) can match its ecological flexibility and the capacity to find food and reproduce almost anywhere. As further evidence of protean adaptability, the cat has become the most common mammalian pet with an estimated 142 million having owners worldwide (Turner and Bateson 2000). Domestic cats are now the most popular house pet in the United States (Adkins 1997). According to the Pet Food Institute (2012) the estimated number of pet cats in the United States is >84 million, well in excess of the number of pet dogs (>75 million). Castillo and Clarke (2003) set the total number of US cats at 100 million, including those without owners.
At the same time, free-ranging cats—many of them house pets—exact a devastating toll on wildlife around the world. May (1988) estimated that there were ∼6 million free-ranging house cats in Britain. Although well fed, they killed an average of 14 prey items each per day, which extrapolates to ∼100 million birds and small mammals annually. In the final chapter I present evidence that killing unowned cats is the only sensible method of controlling their depredation on wildlife. Eradication programs are unpopular with those bent on saving cats at all costs. However, the pressure placed on wild creatures should be alleviated whenever possible, and subtracting alien predators from terrestrial ecosystems is one way of reducing the carnage.
The underlying thesis throughout is that effective management of free-ranging cats is best achieved if based on understanding their behavior, biology, and ecology. In this respect I take issue with experts who claim cats to be social, occupy rank-order positions in dominance hierarchies, disperse under pressure from inbreeding avoidance, are territorial, have a polygynous mating system, and live in functioning kinship groups in which cooperation is common. The data do not support any of these positions, and failure to discard them stands in the way of real progress toward our understanding of why cats behave as they do. More important, casual disregard of the cat's reproductive biology and unusual nutritional requirements has hampered the search for novel methods of population control, limiting current choices to biological agents (e.g. feline panleucopenia virus) and nonselective poisons, augmented by trapping and shooting.
We should take a closer look at the domestic cat for other reasons too. The family Felidae is thought to contain ∼40 species (Wildt et al. (1998: 505, Table 1), and all except the domestic cat are under threat of extinction (Bristol-Gould and Woodruff 2006, França and Godinho 2003, Goodrowe et al. 1989, Neubauer et al. 2004, Nowell and Jackson 1996, Pukazhenthi et al. 2001). The ordinary cat has therefore become a model for conserving other felids through study of its reproductive and sensory biology, genetics, behavior, use of habitat, and nutritional needs.
Cat biology is highly context-dependent. Laboratory studies have taught us much, and knowledge of free-ranging cats is paltry in comparison. My discussion focuses on the latter, but where lacunas exist I fill them with what we know from cats kept in confinement and presume that the differences are not too great. This is a reasonable approach, at least from a physiological standpoint. Cat genetics are well conserved (Plantinga et al. 2011), meaning the metabolic adaptations of cats are not likely to vary whether they occupy a laboratory cage, alley, or sofa cushion. Endocrine factors driving reproduction, for example, are difficult to monitor except in a lab, but differences compared with free-ranging cats are matters of degree, not kind.
I consider free-ranging cats classifiable into three categories: feral, stray, and house. Feral cats survive and reproduce without human assistance and often despite human interference (Berkeley 1982). Stray cats occupy urban, suburban, and rural areas where humans assist indirectly by making garbage available to scavenge and by offering shelter underneath houses and in abandoned buildings. Garbage represents a concentrated food source and also attracts rodents and birds, still other sources of food. Although strays are sometimes fed by sympathetic people, they are less likely to be offered shelter and veterinary care. Free-ranging house cats are those allowed outdoors unsupervised by their owners, who provide consistent shelter, food, and usually veterinary care.
Never take for granted a cat's understated ability to influence our own behavior. During an election year a while back in the village of Talkeetna, Alaska, the populace grew unhappy with its mayoral candidates. Someone started a write-in campaign for a yellow tabby named Stubbs, who hung out in the General Store. Stubbs won, and is now the mayor. Like politicians everywhere he spends much of his time asleep on the job, refusing to let the responsibilities of elected office become a distraction.
Stephen Spotte
Longboat Key, Florida
For cats, indeed, are for cats. And should you wish to learn about cats, only a cat can tell you.
Sōseki Natsume, I Am a Cat
mean | |
µmol | micromole |
a | scaling constant (power law) |
ATP | adenosine triphosphate |
BCFA | branch-chained fatty acid |
BMR | basal metabolic rate |
BSA | body surface area |
cd | candela |
CL | corpus (corpora) lutea |
CM | center of mass |
CSF | contrast sensitivity function |
d | day(s) |
dB | decibel(s) |
DHA | docosahexaenoic acid |
DM | dry matter |
DMI | density-mediated interaction |
E | energy |
EAA | essential amino acid |
EFA | essential fatty acid |
EPA | eicosapentaenoic acid |
EUNL | endogenous urinary nitrogen loss |
FC | food consumption |
FPL | feline panleucopenia |
FUNL | fasting urinary nitrogen loss |
g | gram(s) |
GnRH | gonadotropin-releasing hormone |
ha | hectare(s) |
k | scaling exponent (power law) |
kcal | kilocalorie(s) |
kg | kilogram(s) |
kHz | kilohertz |
kJ | kilojoule(s) |
L | liter(s) |
LH | luteinizing hormone |
M | body mass |
MAF | minimum auditory field |
mg | milligram(s) |
min | minute(s) |
mmol | millimole(s) |
ms | millisecond(s) |
MUP | major urinary protein |
NFE | nitrogen-free extract |
ONL | obligatory nitrogen loss |
PAPP | p-aminopropiophenone |
PUFA | polyunsaturated fatty acid |
RDH | resource dispersion hypothesis |
s | second(s) |
SCFA | short-chained fatty acid |
SD (or σ) | standard deviation of the mean |
SEM | standard error of the mean |
TMI | trait-mediated interaction |
TRSN | tecto-reticulo-spinal tract |
TS | total solids |
UV | ultraviolet |
VNO | vomeronasal organ |
VR | vomeronasal receptor |
W | watt(s) |
y | year(s) |
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