Letter to the Newsmagazine of Veterinary Medicine

Dear Mr. Verndon,

I have been conducting research on Trap-Neuter-Return success stories and criticisms. I came across an article of yours from 2002 and, as a professional journalist, I continue to be amazed at the lack of accuracy in such articles.

http://www.dvmnewsmagazine.com/dvm/a...l.jsp?id=31506

In your article, you state that "70 million cats are estimated as feral or free-roaming in the United States." The article contains a prominent image of a sick kitten, and contains a reference that suggests the "Cats Indoors" campaign helps to make feral cats adoptable or seeks to place them in sanctuaries. Any intelligent observer should realize immediately that such a suggestion is profoundly unrealistic and inaccurate, and simply obscures the underlying "Cats Indoors" ideology – which is eradication, not fostering. "Euthanasia" is mentioned, yet it is made to seem as a policy of extreme cases -- which it is not. Let's not degrade ourselves with sugar-coated euphemisms like "removal," "control," "making them adoptable" and "humanely euthanizing." "Exterminate," "eradicate," "put to death" and "kill" may not be happy words, but at least they are honest.

You do, however, use variations of the word “abandonment†six times in the same space with reference to TNR proponents. Trap-Neuter-Return is the reversal of abandonment. There is a reason why TNR advocates are called “caretakers.†Because that is what they do. They take care of animals – often for many years -- that larger society truly abandoned in the first place.

Your article further states that "Ecologists just want them [feral cats] inside." No. Trap-Neuter-Return critics do not "just want them inside." It's absurd and inaccurate to suggest that 70 million feral cats are going to become house pets. The TNR critics want the cats trapped and taken to shelters to be killed -- in large or small numbers -- with little evidence that "trap-and-kill" policies are effective. This country has embraced such policies for centuries. The TNR movement was born from the sheer lack of effective results from those policies.

A personal point: in the area that I live, we have many stray and feral cats. We also have Animal Control and a "kill" shelter. These cats have continued to breed every year. Last year, I decided to get involved and support TNR. Over the course of last summer, 19 cats were trapped. Eight kittens went up for adoption. Ten cats were spayed or neutered and vaccinated. One cat was put down due to cancer. None of this was done at taxpayer expense. So far, I have yet to see any new kittens. That is a first. That is taking responsibility in the absence of responsibility. I know -- personally, deeply -- that an expensive, time-consuming attempt to round-up the same number of animals would not have been carried out effectively by local government.

Any good policy needs to be a combination of idealism, realism and practicality. Any good policy needs to be specific to the place and time in which it is implemented.

And any good article needs to present such policy issues accurately.

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Your article further states that "Ecologists just want them [feral cats] inside." No. Trap-Neuter-Return critics do not "just want them inside." It's absurd and inaccurate to suggest that 70 million feral cats are going to become house pets. The TNR critics want the cats trapped and taken to shelters to be killed -- in large or small numbers -- with little evidence that "trap-and-kill" policies are effective. This country has embraced such policies for centuries. The TNR movement was born from the sheer lack of effective results from those policies.

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