The alley cats around campus have some allies looking out for them.
Melissa Rice, registrar generalist, said she has been feeding and helping the feral cats around Walker Center for Arts and Sciences. Rice said, after a female cat had kittens, she took the cat family back to her house to improve their health.
“I got all of those kittens rounded up, got them fixed and gave them away to homes,” she said.
These “community cats,” as Rice calls them, are domesticated and can’t completely live on their own, she said. Rice said other faculty and staff in Walker Center and around campus help feed and care for the cats. Rather than euthanizing the cats, Rice said the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals recommends a system of trap, neuter and return as the best way to control a cat population.
“You take them to get them fixed, you bring them back and their ears are tipped so that everyone can recognize that they’ve already been fixed,” she said.
The cats also are given rabies vaccines, she said.
“Because they’re in the area and they’re territorial, other cats don’t come in,” she said. “You stop the population and they just kind of live in that area.”
Rice said starving the cats doesn’t solve the problem.
“If you stop feeding them, it’s inhumane,” Rice said. “If you can get them to live longer, like you have a colony that’s fixed, they live like a regular house cat and they keep other cats from coming in. What every expert has said is that that’s really the way to control the cat population.”
If the cats are trapped and relocated or euthanized, the cycle will continue, Rice said.
“It’s the vacuum effect. If you get rid of these, if you move them out, 50 more cats will move in,” she said. “But then those aren’t fixed and vaccinated.”
Some students witnessed cats running through Kirkpatrick Auditorium in Kirkpatrick Fine Arts Center during rehearsals for the spring dance show, Broadway Revue.
“Dancers were standing onstage and getting notes and all of a sudden, dancers on the stage saw a cat come into the pit,” said Morgan Wanamaker, dance junior. “We went in the pit to try and find it, but it must have gotten in a different hole.”
Rice said officials should check the buildings for holes and close them up so the cats can’t get in.
The University of Florida in Gainesville conducted a study by sterilizing feral cats in neighborhoods around their campus and found that, after two years of the study, the rate of cats picked up by animal control decreased by 70 percent, according to vetmed.ufl.edu.
Rice said some of the misconceptions about the community cats is that they transmit diseases or are dangerous.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that cats are not that susceptible to rabies,” she said. “Community cats are shy. They’re not dangerous, and they’re not going to attack anybody, unless you corner them.”
The cats help control rodent and cockroach populations, she said.
The School of Visual Arts partnered with the Central Oklahoma Humane Society last year to provide a class for students to build cat houses for the community cats.
Collin Salmonowics, film junior and former student of the cat house class, said it taught him more about the feral cats around the city.
“Before taking the class, I had only occasionally seen them or the food that people sometimes leave out for them,” he said. “But after the class, I learned more about not only the cats, but the efforts made by the OKC Humane Society, namely their catch and release program for spaying and neutering, to ensure the population doesn’t grow too much and that the cats that are on the streets have places to go, especially in the winter.”
Rice said she wants to be a voice for the cats and find a more long-term solution.
“I don’t have all the answers. I just don’t want the cats to be rounded up and euthanized. It’s inhumane, and I think everyone wants a humane solution for the cats,” she said.
If students are interested in helping out with the community cats, they may email Rice at mwrice@okcu.edu.
“If you TNR [trap, neuter, return], you stabilize the colony, you save lives, you stop the whole vacuum effect, and it answers the needs of the community,” she said.
Leave a Reply