Kill animal shelters and a basic ecological model

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok, so in Houston, apparently, the animal shelters kill 90% of the animals given to them. This is an upsetting bit of news, and I’m trying to think of it their way.

Ok, so there’s stray dogs and cats in Houston. Someone reports an animal as stray. The catcher comes and nabs it, and hauls it to the pound. Essentially, the animal is “guilty” of being loose with no one claiming it. They hold the animal for 3 days and then kill it unless they have shelter space for it, and they obviously select the animals that are most likely to be adopted to be sheltered.

They cannot release a caught animal any more than Texas prisons can release a violent inmate. Someone called the cops on that animal, and it must not be wanted. And they can’t take care of more than a finite number of animals. So they kill the excess.

Now, logically, if you kill 80,000 animals a year, you’d think that over time, the number of strays out there would decline, and you’d eventually have enough shelter space for them all. But this isn’t what happens.

What actually happens is, there’s a certain amount of food out there for stray dogs and cats. Both types of animals can hunt, though I suspect that humans are the primary feeder of such creatures. Whenever I find a stray cat, it mind controls me into feeding it by looking cute, giving plaintive mews, and headbutts.

Since each mother cat can birth several offspring and can start producing offspring at as early as a year old, unless you find them all, there’s going to be a perpetually replenishing supply of cats and to a lesser extent dogs. The reason there’s not a cat every square foot of the city is only because there isn’t enough food. The regulatory mechanism is probably that mother cats who haven’t found enough to eat will not get pregnant (won’t go into heat) or will miscarry, so the cat population expands until the mother cats are only fed enough to make more kitties some of the time.

This is why killing the animals is pointless. Every time you grab the animal off the street and murder it, you free up available cat and dog food for more strays. More of the mother cats are well fed, they have more kitties, and nothing changes.

So the “spay and release” method is a sound way to solve this, huh. Each spayed animal can’t make more animals, yet occupies the ecological space that breeding animals will take up.

2

That is exactly the rationale behind TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release.)

3

There’s an underlying assumption that is not always true that the current population equals the support capability of the environment.

Said another way, suburban folks have a tolerance of X strays per subdivision and when they see more than that they fund culling operations to bring the frequency inline. The culling is sized to the tolerance level and not directly to the support capacity of the environment.

Strawman example: if we have an environment that can support 1 billion dogs, but it’s currently at 100 and we want to keep it there, we only have to cull the annual breeding capacity of 100 dogs. The OP proposes that eliminating culling keeps the population at 100 anyway, though it is clear in this case the dogs will multiply ever year until the environmental equilibrium of 1 billion is reached.

If we were already at 1 billion dogs and didn’t mind that, then the OP is right, we wouldn’t need to cull because starvation would cull for us (though we would have a city full of dead and starving dogs everywhere).

4

Wouldn’t you have to capture and spay (and release) just as many cats as you would if you euthanized them?

Stray cats die off at roughly the same rates as un-spayed ones (starvation, feline disease, being hit by cars, eaten by coyotes, etc.). And spayed ones are always going to be replaced by un-spayed ones, just like the unspayed ones. So AFAICT you don’t really gain anything from the increased expense of capture/spay/release vs. capture/euthanize, plus the additional “expense” of having feral cats in a given ecosystem.

You have a population of 100 stray cats. You capture 90 of them, spay/neuter them, and release. You still have a population of 100 stray cats. As they die off, they are replaced from the un-spayed cats, and have a stable population of 100 cats.

Or you capture the 90 and euthanize them. The population is replaced from the un-spayed cats, and eventually you have the same population, with the added advantage that for a while at least, the population is < 100, and that you didn’t spend as much spaying cats.

Regards,
Shodan

5

Since I don’t see an actual question in the OP, and using loaded terms like “murder” in reference to animals isn’t really suitable for GQ, let’s move this over to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

6

One missing variable is the disease vector of stray/feral animals. It’s not affected by TNR programs other than in the sense that the more animals you have running loose, the more disease they can carry and spread. This public hygiene issue seems to be frequently ignored by rural communities (globally) that don’t believe in spay/neuter. In cultures particularly with dominant religions that feel spay/neuter is “unnatural”, I marvel at how they seem to avoid the concept that having hundreds of sick animals running loose, spreading disease and propogating more sick animals is… natural. Well, I guess it is natural, but it sure isn’t NICE. From either the animal welfare or public safety perspectives!

7

The only way TNR increases disease is if that “tolerance” model is correct, where people call the pound if there are too many strays.

8

Killing a stray cat is not murder, Habeed. Murder is the unlawful killing of a human. And I LIKE cats.

And every stray DOG in Memphis can fuck off and die, in my opinion.

9

I didn’t say that TNR increases disease, just that it doesn’t reduce it. Taking proper care of pets (not turning them loose to fend for themselves) is the best solution.

10

Trying for world wide acceptance of cats, dog & horses as a good food source. … What?

11

Perhaps not, but taking a cute little kitteh that mews and is friendly to humans, grabbing it with leather gloves and caging it, then putting it to death with a shot seems pretty mean. I understand putting down animals that are sick and suffering but killing healthy animals seems cruel. I can also understand putting down dangerous animals - certain breeds of dogs do appear to be pretty dangerous.

12

The OP is not taking into account the kitten and puppy mills, backyard breeders and general dumbass people who don’t spay/neuter their pets, making millions more every year - that aren’t strays to begin with and aren’t breeding outside of an “owner’s” property - that are then dumped at the shelters, on the curb, in forest preserves, to fend for themselves when they’re no longer a cute Christmas/birthday/Easter/anniversary present. There are two whole wards at Chicago’s Animal Care and Control that houses just owner surrenders that were never on the street. Often they are already pregnant or have a litter with them.

Part of feline TNR is vaccinations, and some test for heartworm, feline leukemia and FIV. Some (though not all) will euthanize if these diseases are detected. Also taken into consideration is any illness already presenting, or injuries that would leave the cat lame or otherwise compromised towards taking care of itself outside. Some are treated (if it’s something like an abscess that can be released in a week without repercussions) and some are euthanized. Chicago has a very active and organized TNR program that includes managed colonies, with assigned caretakers, who keep track of the cats and take care of them healthwise when necessary. It makes a solid positive impact on the health of the feral cat population.

13

Nope. If a horny male cat fucks a sterile female cat, he’s done for the season, and there’s no resulting litter. Over time, numbers decrease.

See: Goats. Though slaughter + sterilization helps more than one or the other by itself.

Edit: See also: Mosquito eradication.

14

:confused: :dubious: This doesn’t make sense. The goats were also injected with hormones that resulted in permanent estrus, making them receptive to males despite being sterile. This isn’t done with feline TNR and wouldn’t be due to cost. So. Male cats are only mating with females that are actually receptive and fertile. There is no mating happening with female cats not in estrus, wanna see a real cat fight? And “done for the season”? Both male and female cats mate with multiple partners multiple times a day. Female cats are known to have litters with more than one father.

15

Starving to death, being hit by vehicles, eaten by coyotes or other predators, suffering injuries, suffering disease, accidentally consuming things like rat poison, and being attacked by less savory human beings are also cruel fates for “cute little kittens”. Life as a feral stray tends to be nasty, brutish, and short.

16

Huh. I thought male cats would happily rape an uninterested female cat.

17

I don’t think the term 'rape " can be meaningfully applied to feline behavior

18

Why would any one assume that the only competition for the food resources are other feral dogs and cats, and not, say, other native animals that both hunt and scavenge in an urban to suburban ecosystem?

Note that cats are more highly effective predators of birds than are many native species.

19

I’ve seen female cats basically try to trick an uninterested male cat (the male cat had been neutered but the female had not) into mating. The kittey run forward, flip over, and power slide on a slick hardwood floor such that it’s spread rear legs would slid underneath the male cat. I guess the female cat was hoping the male cat might insert his penis by accident.

20

I don’t think it is correct that cats only mate once per season. You may be thinking of screw flies.

Regards,
Shodan