feral kitty question
July 29, 2023 3:35 PM Subscribe
I am curious about the very specific reason why feral cats have a hard time being feral other than the general answer of "They have evolved to be adapted to human companionship."
Feral cats have a rough time in the urban wild. They usually look skinny and mangy. They don't seem happy.
Other animals (coyotes, possums, raccoons, etc etc) live quite well in urban and suburban environments. Escaped Monk parrots make wonderful societies and do just fine as well for generations.
What is it about cats that makes it harder for them?
Assume I already understand that:
1. Most fauna have a lot of health issues and struggle in nature. However, when you look at a rabbit in your yard, or a skunk or whatever, it often is sleek and looks fine. Feral cats hardly ever do, why?
2. I understand that cats have adapted to human life for thousands and thousands of years. That in itself is not enough of an answer for what I'm asking, I want to know what it is *specifically* that makes them seem more bedraggled and in need of a home and a can of Purina than, say, a squirrel or a weasel.
3. I don't think this is my "cats are cute" human projection entirely. The cats in cities usually look pretty rough.
Of course if I'm wrong that's fine to point out too.
Feral cats have a rough time in the urban wild. They usually look skinny and mangy. They don't seem happy.
Other animals (coyotes, possums, raccoons, etc etc) live quite well in urban and suburban environments. Escaped Monk parrots make wonderful societies and do just fine as well for generations.
What is it about cats that makes it harder for them?
Assume I already understand that:
1. Most fauna have a lot of health issues and struggle in nature. However, when you look at a rabbit in your yard, or a skunk or whatever, it often is sleek and looks fine. Feral cats hardly ever do, why?
2. I understand that cats have adapted to human life for thousands and thousands of years. That in itself is not enough of an answer for what I'm asking, I want to know what it is *specifically* that makes them seem more bedraggled and in need of a home and a can of Purina than, say, a squirrel or a weasel.
3. I don't think this is my "cats are cute" human projection entirely. The cats in cities usually look pretty rough.
Of course if I'm wrong that's fine to point out too.
Our domestic cats didn't evolve in North America but in northern Africa, and would be best adapted to a Mediterranean climate. Photos of outdoor cats from places like Rome and Istanbul don't usually look so bedraggled.
posted by zadcat at 3:41 PM on July 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by zadcat at 3:41 PM on July 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
I live next door to a feral colony, and while admittedly my neighbor feeds them, they all look good, at least comparable to the average squirrel.
Are you mostly basing this off of cities? Feral barn cats are going to be healthier than feral alley cats.
posted by coffeecat at 4:03 PM on July 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
Are you mostly basing this off of cities? Feral barn cats are going to be healthier than feral alley cats.
posted by coffeecat at 4:03 PM on July 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
As a barn owner, we always had a half dozen or so barn cats. These were mostly volunteer feral cats who found a great shelter with lots of food and water available at all times. They mostly thrived, though a few were the victims of bullying by the top cats. Maybe those are the ones you tend to see?
posted by mmf at 4:09 PM on July 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by mmf at 4:09 PM on July 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
I used to live in a city with a fairly widespread feral cat population and the colonies I saw tended to look about as healthy as your average house cat. I’m not sure what evidence you’re basing the premise of your question on.
posted by MadamM at 4:13 PM on July 29, 2023
posted by MadamM at 4:13 PM on July 29, 2023
Response by poster: I'm basing this question both on my own observation and the widespread cat activist drive to help, rescue or neuter feral cats. For example this article from the vet section of Web MD which says "most of them share a single destiny: short, difficult lives."
I am not claiming this is definitively true, but it's fairly common thinking about feral cats.
posted by lesser whistling duck at 4:37 PM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
I am not claiming this is definitively true, but it's fairly common thinking about feral cats.
posted by lesser whistling duck at 4:37 PM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think it can depend on circumstances. I encountered a feral colony once that was being "looked after" by someone who wasn't good at it. Kittens had eye infections and didn't look like they would thrive. This was in a garage in an urban back alley.
posted by zadcat at 4:41 PM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by zadcat at 4:41 PM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Our domestic cats didn't evolve in North America but in northern Africa, and would be best adapted to a Mediterranean climate.
Unfortunately I can confirm that in North Africa - Marrakesh, Tangier, and Asilah, Morocco - they're not looking so great either.
Part of the problem is that the colonies tend to suffer from endemic upper respiratory and eye infections and there are other diseases they pass among each other, like feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus.
Cats also procreate very quickly, females being sexually mature at around 6 months old, and can have multiple litters - like 3-4 - per year, often of 4-6 kittens, which results in a huge, huge population increase, very quickly, if there is no population control. There are also other factors like toms fighting each other for mates and multiple fathers of a single litter, toms killing babies, etc. going on, plus with that much inter-breeding, there can be congenital conditions that are passed to the babies
I think the healthier-looking colonies tend to have some people doing active trap-neuter-release and general colony health maintenance, but trapping and treating feral cats can be rough and money is not exactly forthcoming from official sources, but rather tends to be donations from individuals. Keeping a colony healthy is so much more than just giving cats food.
Since I raised Morocco, part of the issue there and in Muslim countries is that people sometimes don't believe in spaying and neutering the animals because that's interfering in their destinies and because in some places money is tight, there's not a lot extra to really forge an effort for the cats. They do clearly love and care for the community cats as best they can though.
posted by urbanlenny at 5:26 PM on July 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
Unfortunately I can confirm that in North Africa - Marrakesh, Tangier, and Asilah, Morocco - they're not looking so great either.
Part of the problem is that the colonies tend to suffer from endemic upper respiratory and eye infections and there are other diseases they pass among each other, like feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus.
Cats also procreate very quickly, females being sexually mature at around 6 months old, and can have multiple litters - like 3-4 - per year, often of 4-6 kittens, which results in a huge, huge population increase, very quickly, if there is no population control. There are also other factors like toms fighting each other for mates and multiple fathers of a single litter, toms killing babies, etc. going on, plus with that much inter-breeding, there can be congenital conditions that are passed to the babies
I think the healthier-looking colonies tend to have some people doing active trap-neuter-release and general colony health maintenance, but trapping and treating feral cats can be rough and money is not exactly forthcoming from official sources, but rather tends to be donations from individuals. Keeping a colony healthy is so much more than just giving cats food.
Since I raised Morocco, part of the issue there and in Muslim countries is that people sometimes don't believe in spaying and neutering the animals because that's interfering in their destinies and because in some places money is tight, there's not a lot extra to really forge an effort for the cats. They do clearly love and care for the community cats as best they can though.
posted by urbanlenny at 5:26 PM on July 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
The entire concept of feral kitties with eye infections makes me sad... And I am a dog person.
Barn cats find mice and things to eat. City feral cats have to take down rats. Rats are serious. And other scavenger creatures like crows, raccoons. opossums.
posted by Windopaene at 6:39 PM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Barn cats find mice and things to eat. City feral cats have to take down rats. Rats are serious. And other scavenger creatures like crows, raccoons. opossums.
posted by Windopaene at 6:39 PM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
The barn cat colonies I know of also don’t tend to get overpopulated as quickly as urban feral cat colonies I know of (that aren’t the target of a trap-neuter-release program). Maybe a combination of predators killing the sicker, weaker cats in rural colonies and overpopulation spreading disease more easily in crowded urban colonies contribute to feral barn cats sometimes looking healthier than feral urban cats?
posted by eviemath at 6:52 PM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by eviemath at 6:52 PM on July 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: One possible explanation that comes to mind is that wild animals like squirrels or weasels are generally only going to be found in places that provide good squirrel or weasel habitat and their population levels are to a large extent going be controlled by the amount of resources available. If the population grows to the point where there's not enough food to go around, there will be higher mortality and less successful reproduction, and numbers then start to decline, resulting in a population that generally stays within the bounds of what the habitat can support. If the area really doesn't provide good habitat for skunks, there won't be skunks there, other than the occasional one that wanders in and either dies or moves on.
But new cats are constantly being released into the environment when people dump them or they run away or get lost. That happens even if the area has poor cat habitat or already has all the cats it can support. And pet cats (or sort-of pets that hang around someone's house and get fed) that aren't spayed or neutered can breed with fully wild cats, helping to boost the population. So you may be seeing cats who aren't healthy because they're living in a place that doesn't really meet their needs or where too many cats are competing for limited resources or where numbers are so high that diseases and parasites are spread more easily. Some of the cats you see may also have started life as pets so they don't know how to fend for themselves as well as cats who have always lived on their own.
Monk parakeet populations only become established in places with good habitat that meets their needs. If it's not a good place for them to live, they'll die out because people aren't constantly adding lots and lots of new ones. But cats are much more common as pets, which means people are constantly adding more and more cats to replace the ones that starve or get diseases. So their populations don't die out entirely even in places where most of them are unhealthy and die young.
posted by Redstart at 7:54 PM on July 29, 2023 [9 favorites]
But new cats are constantly being released into the environment when people dump them or they run away or get lost. That happens even if the area has poor cat habitat or already has all the cats it can support. And pet cats (or sort-of pets that hang around someone's house and get fed) that aren't spayed or neutered can breed with fully wild cats, helping to boost the population. So you may be seeing cats who aren't healthy because they're living in a place that doesn't really meet their needs or where too many cats are competing for limited resources or where numbers are so high that diseases and parasites are spread more easily. Some of the cats you see may also have started life as pets so they don't know how to fend for themselves as well as cats who have always lived on their own.
Monk parakeet populations only become established in places with good habitat that meets their needs. If it's not a good place for them to live, they'll die out because people aren't constantly adding lots and lots of new ones. But cats are much more common as pets, which means people are constantly adding more and more cats to replace the ones that starve or get diseases. So their populations don't die out entirely even in places where most of them are unhealthy and die young.
posted by Redstart at 7:54 PM on July 29, 2023 [9 favorites]
Compared to the other species you mention feral cats have explosive breeding habits and/or the potential to live much longer lives. Thus the ecological niche they fill is in a constant state of overflow and death by starvation and disease is the normal outcome.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:02 PM on July 29, 2023
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:02 PM on July 29, 2023
A lot of animals live in cycles of boom and bust. This is true of wild animals too. When the population numbers are low the animals are healthy. When the population numbers climb, the animals first become unhealthy as they compete for insufficient resources, and then there is an epidemic that kills most of them. In dogs, wild or feral, this is usually an epidemic of distemper. In squirrels the epidemic that wipes out 95% of them is usually mange. In lions, it was actually fleas that caused the population of one African wildlife reserve to drop massively. And in cats it is usually either feline leukemia, feline distemper or rhino, but cat fleas can also take a massive toll.
It's very true that the lives of feral cats are often terrible. Sadly, their lives are much likely to be terrible when you have people feeding them, but taking no other care of them. Their numbers go way up, they fight for access to the feeding stations and they catch whatever diseases and infestations other cats have, that are feeding at the same locations.
The lives of wild creatures or fully feral cats are not always wonderful. The fact is that many animals, at adolescence, seek for territory where they can thrive and never find it and die as a result. If course you don't usually know anything about their deaths when it is wild animals. Urban wildlife such as rats, mice, groundhogs, foxes and raccoons frequently don't live any longer than a feral cat does. You'll never know, when four out of the five groundhogs born in a litter somewhere on your block end up dying in their first year because they never find territory of their own with sufficient food.
Feral cats are often not afraid of being seen, just of being caught. Raccoons on the other hand, will avoid being seen much more that cats will, while foxes are even more shy of humans than raccoons are. Not many people feed raccoons or skunks deliberately. Many more are going to feed stray cats. If someone is feeding the feral cats you can easily end up with fifteen of them in a single block; if you had that many raccoons there is a high chance that people would be trapping or poisoning them because of the damage they create when they gnaw their way into people's attics or garages. One way or another you will probably see a lot more feral cats than raccoons, and there will be a higher population density of cats, making them more likely to be sick than the raccoons. A sick raccoon is going to be especially wary of being seen, and limit their foraging to the safest possible time when there are no humans about. An awful lot of their foraging takes place on garbage night, after the garbage is put out and every one has gone to bed, but before the garbage truck comes. But a sick feral cat may have no choice but to get to a feeding station at the time when the humans feeding them puts food out - and that probably means in the day time and some place in the open.
Cats do best if they are living in proximity to many small farms that grow grain - they adapted to living parallel to humans, living on the small birds and rodents that go after the grain. A modern city, of course doesn't have these conditions. For raccoons a city offers much better foraging than the woods they normally live in. City raccoons are normally better fed AND more intelligent than woods raccoons. But for cats a city is not as optimal as a living near grain fields. Neither woods nor cities are optimal territory for them.
I suspect you live somewhere that people feed the feral cats, but don't do anything effective to control the infestations and epidemics. If they do trap, neuter, release they are probably not getting enough of them to actually control the population.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:05 AM on July 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's very true that the lives of feral cats are often terrible. Sadly, their lives are much likely to be terrible when you have people feeding them, but taking no other care of them. Their numbers go way up, they fight for access to the feeding stations and they catch whatever diseases and infestations other cats have, that are feeding at the same locations.
The lives of wild creatures or fully feral cats are not always wonderful. The fact is that many animals, at adolescence, seek for territory where they can thrive and never find it and die as a result. If course you don't usually know anything about their deaths when it is wild animals. Urban wildlife such as rats, mice, groundhogs, foxes and raccoons frequently don't live any longer than a feral cat does. You'll never know, when four out of the five groundhogs born in a litter somewhere on your block end up dying in their first year because they never find territory of their own with sufficient food.
Feral cats are often not afraid of being seen, just of being caught. Raccoons on the other hand, will avoid being seen much more that cats will, while foxes are even more shy of humans than raccoons are. Not many people feed raccoons or skunks deliberately. Many more are going to feed stray cats. If someone is feeding the feral cats you can easily end up with fifteen of them in a single block; if you had that many raccoons there is a high chance that people would be trapping or poisoning them because of the damage they create when they gnaw their way into people's attics or garages. One way or another you will probably see a lot more feral cats than raccoons, and there will be a higher population density of cats, making them more likely to be sick than the raccoons. A sick raccoon is going to be especially wary of being seen, and limit their foraging to the safest possible time when there are no humans about. An awful lot of their foraging takes place on garbage night, after the garbage is put out and every one has gone to bed, but before the garbage truck comes. But a sick feral cat may have no choice but to get to a feeding station at the time when the humans feeding them puts food out - and that probably means in the day time and some place in the open.
Cats do best if they are living in proximity to many small farms that grow grain - they adapted to living parallel to humans, living on the small birds and rodents that go after the grain. A modern city, of course doesn't have these conditions. For raccoons a city offers much better foraging than the woods they normally live in. City raccoons are normally better fed AND more intelligent than woods raccoons. But for cats a city is not as optimal as a living near grain fields. Neither woods nor cities are optimal territory for them.
I suspect you live somewhere that people feed the feral cats, but don't do anything effective to control the infestations and epidemics. If they do trap, neuter, release they are probably not getting enough of them to actually control the population.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:05 AM on July 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
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posted by box at 3:38 PM on July 29, 2023 [9 favorites]