Frequently Asked Questions

Feral is just another word for wild.  It means that the cats have not been socialized to humans and that they are afraid of people.  It does not mean that the cats are aggressive or dangerous.  Feral cats run from people.  They do not attack unless they are cornered and feel that they have no other alternative but to fight for their lives.

AzCATs suggests that we should not get too caught up in our efforts to define the temperament of the homeless cats living on our streets.  Trying to define those cats by their temperament diverts attention from the real issue.  It is true that most cats in colonies (families of cats) living on our streets are certainly not tame enough to be adopted as household pets.  However, whatever the temperament of those cats, the critical fact is that most of those cats have not been sterilized unless trap, neuter, return has been practiced there.  As a result it is those cats that are overwhelming responsible, whatever their temperament, for the flood of homeless cats and kittens streaming into our shelters.

No.  AzCATs does not remove or relocate feral cats.  We have that policy for a lot of reasons.  The primary ones are as follows:

1.  Feral cats taken to shelters like Maricopa County Animal Care & Control or the Humane Society will be euthanized.  Open admission shelters like those do not have the resources to tame even the smallest feral kittens.  Feral cats are wild, they are not socialized to humans, they are afraid of people.  Their temperament prevents them from being placed for adoption.  Open admission shelters like these two do not have the resources to devote to the labor intensive and time consuming process of taming feral kittens.

2.  “The vacuum effect.”  Maricopa County is an area with a substantial feral cat population.  They are literally everywhere.  If you remove the colony more cats will come and more cats will come and more cats will come.  It is a never ending cycle.

3.  There is no place to take them.  We maintain two feeding stations in public areas but do not ever relocate to them.  It is unfair to the existing colony.  There is no way to do a proper release where you confine the cats for a period to get them used to the area (2 month imprint time is the general rule).  Even if cats are able to be held in the new area long enough to get them used to the relocation site, there is no guarantee that those cats will remain there once they are set free.

4.  Remove the problem short term for the people and you are just delaying the day when we will have to educate them about the reality of feral cats.  The reality is that people will have them, like the birds in the sky.  The only issue is whether you want sterilized or breeding cats.  Once reality sets in and it is time to educate about no more removals, the job will be harder if we have enabled them in the past by removing other ferals in the past.

5.  Let's assume for the sake of argument that we had a safe, common relocation area.  Given the extremely large number of ferals in Maricopa County, unless you severely restrict the guidelines for relocation to that area, any such sanctuary in our area will be filled to capacity in very short order leaving us back at square one.

6.  Regrettably, feral cats are dying in our area every day.  AzCATs maintains a waiting list of many people feeding at colonies of various sizes.  Each of those caregivers is willing to have the cats back to continue to care for them.  The problem is so great here that AzCATs cannot yet keep up with the demand for TNR help from people who are willing to have the cats returned.  The harsh reality is that we hope the monetary expense and emotional toll of trap and kill will convert the people seeking relocation so that at some point they will have to turn to us for the humane solution.  This is why we will never relocate for someone who has control over the property and simply wants them gone for reasons related to human convenience or aesthetic pleasures.

AzCATs adheres to the rule that the "R" in TNR must stand for Return and that only in extremely rare circumstances will it stand for Relocation.

In a situation like this, AzCATs needs you to take charge.  You must speak with your neighbors to find out if the cats are owned.  If they are owned, find out if they have been spayed/neutered.  Low cost spay/neuter services are available, and will help prevent unwanted kittens that may become homeless.

If the cats are abandoned or homeless, a resident needs to take responsibility for the cats.  This caretaker must speak with the apartment management to gain their approval to have the cats spayed/neutered and returned to the property (TNR).  Once the cats are returned, a permanent caretaker must promise to provide food and water on a regular basis.

AzCATs can help implement a TNR program, but a resident must take responsibility for the project and educate management and neighbors before AzCATs can assist.

Educate your neighbors that trap and euthanize is a more costly and less effective method of controlling the problem than Trap, Neuter, Return.  Exterminators will trap the cats and take them to be euthanized but they won’t do it for free.  They may even tell you that the cats are taken to a shelter.  That is true.  But they are taken to open admission shelters which take cats from the public.  However, because they are feral (wild) they cannot be placed for adoption and will be euthanized at those shelter.

Maricopa County Animal Care & Control supports Trap, Neuter, Return.  They do not come out and trap cats for people that want them removed and euthanized.  They will charge $61 for every single feral cat turned into their facility for euthanasia.

Poisoning feral cats is animal cruelty.  Animal cruelty is illegal.  Report any instances of animal cruelty to your local police department.  If you are within Maricopa County but outside city limits contact the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department.  Let your neighbors know that cruelty will be reported.

AzCATs does not have fostering or adoption programs.  We do work with limited admission shelters to try to place tame cats or small kittens found in feral colonies where we have trapped.  However, we can help very, very few cats or kittens that way.

Often feral cats will learn over time to allow one or two caregivers to come close to them, pet them, and even very rarely to pick them up.  This is sometimes called “feral fixation.”  The cat develops a strong attachment to those one or two people who have been caring for them for a long time.  On some level they have learned to trust those who have long provided them with food and water.  That does not mean that the cat is tame enough to be adopted and placed inside someone else’s home.  If you want to test how tame the cat really is bring someone with you to the feeding station that has never been there before.  You will probably find that someone who is a stranger to the cat can get nowhere near it.

This cat is happy in her familiar environment.  While it may seem to you that the cat’s living conditions are horrible and that an indoor home would be better, the reality is that the cat is better off where she is.  In a shelter or in the home of a stranger she would most likely spend her days in fear, hiding under a bed or in a closet.

Finally, remember that tame cats and kittens surrendered by their families to open admission shelters are still euthanized in Arizona because there are not enough people willing to adopt them.  As long as that is the case there is no point trying to tame adult feral cats or trying to move semi-feral cats from the street into adoptive homes.  Once we are no longer euthanizing tame cats for lack of adoptive homes, we might reconsider what is best for cats like the one you are feeding.

No.  AzCATs concentrates its scarce volunteer resources on our efforts to sterilize the cats living on our streets.  Find a friend, relative, or co-worker to feed the cats.  Start now.  Don’t wait until just a few days or weeks before you move.  You might try offering to continue to help paying for the food as an incentive.  Another alternative is to purchase large self feeding and watering containers from a pet food store and returning periodically to fill them yourself.  Please don’t just abandon cats that have become dependent upon you.

It is not a matter of the age of the kittens.  Veterinarians working with AzCATs practice early age spay/neuter.  Kittens as small as one pound are routinely and safely sterilized by our veterinarians.

The American Veterinary Medical Association supports the concept of prepubertal spay/neuter and it is accepted in many veterinary schools.  There is a video available through the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine that shows the surgical techniques used for early spay neuter.  Call UC Davis at 530-752-1324 or visit their web site at www.calf.vetmed.ucdavis.edu.

Eartipping is the nationally endorsed method of identifying sterilized, free-roaming cats that are part of a managed colony.

Eartipping is painless and humane.  While the cat is under anesthesia for the spay/neuter surgery, the point of the left ear is flattened slightly.  Should a cat that has been eartipped enter a trap again, it is immediately released since it is clearly marked as having been sterilized.  Recognizing a cat in the field as previously sterilized prevents that cat from enduring the additional trauma and risk of another trip to the clinic, being put under anesthesia, and in some cases undergoing exploratory surgery.  Not only does the absence of eartipping cause further trauma and risk to sterilized cats, it wastes valuable resources such as money for veterinary services.

Other forms of identification have been tried, but have not proven to be as effective as eartipping in signaling early on in the trap, neuter, return (TNR) process that the feral cat is sterilized.  For example, internal microchips and ear tattoos are impossible to detect in the field and nearly impossible to detect on a feral cat before it has been anesthetized.  Microchips do have value in getting cats back to where they belong, but should be used in conjunction with eartipping.

Eartipping is lifesaving in other ways. Maricopa County Animal Care & Control (AC&C) works with AzCATs in many ways on feral cat issues.  Among other things, AzCATs has trained AC&C’s intake staff to look for eartipped ferals being brought in by the public for euthanization.  On at least one occasion, AC&C personnel immediately recognized the eartip before the trapper had left and explained that the cat was sterilized and lived in a managed colony.  The trapper remarked that she would be glad to release the cat back where she had trapped it.  Her only concern had been further breeding.  Tattoos and microchips would not have been recognized before the trapper left the cat there to be euthanized.  Eartipping saved that cat’s life and got it back to its colony.

AzCATs will not trap on private property where caregivers are not authorized to continue feeding the cats on their return or where it is known that the owner of the private property is opposed to TNR.  AzCATs will try to educate the property owner about the benefits of TNR.  We will provide you with literature on the benefits of TNR and even come talk to your employer if they are willing to listen to us.

There are many reasons why we do not TNR where owners have ordered that caregivers stop feeding or where caregivers are told that the cats can be trapped but cannot be returned to the property.  AzCATs has a long list of people waiting for our help and willing to have the cats back, feed them and let them live out their lives.  It is a waste of scarce resources to TNR cats that may well be killed anyway when that list is currently longer than we can manage.

Trap and Kill does not work.  Ordering people not to feed does not work.  Unfortunately cats die every day when people believe these things work.  If we bail them out they never have to confront the error of their ways.

The position the volunteer trapper could be faced with is entirely untenable.  Volunteers could be cited for trespassing.  They could be faced with hostility when they come to trap.  When they return to release the cats they could be met by a hostile property owner that refuses to allow them to return the cats.

No.  There are many reasons why AzCATs does not test the cats for FeLV or FIV.  Here are a few of those reasons:

• Studies show that there is no greater incident of disease in feral cats than there is in tame, owned free-roaming cats.
• It is unaltered cats, regardless of whether they are from feral colonies or private homes, that wander, fight, reproduce, and have the potential to spread disease.
• Sterilization reduces or eliminates the behaviors which spread disease.
• Studies show that using our scarce economic resources to sterilize more cats than otherwise would be sterilized given the cost of testing, actually works to more quickly reduce the number of FeLV positive cats.
• The American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) recommends retesting all cats that initially test positive.  AAFP states that the decision to euthanize should never be made solely on the basis of one positive test.  It is impractical or impossible to hold feral cats for the period of time necessary before retesting can occur.
• False positives do occur and a negative test does not necessarily mean that the cat has not been exposed to disease.
• Asymptomatic, infected cats can remain healthy for several years.  Cats sterilized through AzCATs’ TNR programs receive ongoing care and monitoring from their caregivers.  Any cat showing signs of illness can be subsequently attended to.
• Removing and euthanizing a cat that tests positive will not necessarily prevent the spread of infection within the colony since the colony’s exposure to the virus would already have occurred.
• Exposure does not always mean infection.

The vacuum effect is a situation arising when feral cats are removed from an environment.  Other cats then move in to take advantage of the food source that is available.  They will quickly fill the space from which the cats were removed.  These new, usually unsterilized cats will breed to the capacity of the site.

Several resources are available to help you with educational efforts.  Visit AzCATs' Resources and TNR pages for documents that can be distributed to your neighbors.  For comprehensive articles, fact sheets, and how-to documents, visit Alley Cat Allies Info Center at http://www.alleycat.org/ic.html.

Trap:  Cats are humanely trapped using food as bait.

Neuter:  The cats are taken to a veterinarian where they are spayed or neutered.  Their left ear is tipped so people will recognize that the cat has been sterilized.

Return:  Unfortunately, adult feral cats are extremely difficult to tame and are not adoptable, so they are returned to their original environment where caregivers agree to provide them with food and water.

Do Nothing:  Eventually the problem will reach unmanageable levels and cause untold suffering.  One unaltered female cat and her offspring can produce 420,000 cats in just seven years.

Trap & Kill:  Aside from being inhumane, this approach is not a solution.  The problem is everywhere.  More cats will simply move in to fill the void and start the cycle over again.

Catch & Tame:  With the exception of young kittens, this approach is not realistic.  Wild adults cannot be socialized to humans to the point where they are able to find homes as pets.  For a small minority that could be tamed, the time and effort that goes into helping just a few cats is prohibitive.  Even with very young kittens, taming can take several weeks of intensive socialization work.

Relocation:  There is no other place for them to go and studies show that if you remove cats from their original location, others merely move in to take their place.  This is known as the vacuum effect.