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Working cats outside of Oakland Animal Services constantly look for prey.

Rodent problem? Feral cats touted as eco-friendly pest control in Oakland

on September 27, 2016

At Oakland Animal Services, volunteers are busy walking dogs, petting cats and caring for the other animals up for adoption. Customers pour into the lobby trying to drop off found animals or find a new best friend. At first glance, everything seems standard for an animal shelter, but the back parking lot reveals something innovative.

The lot is vacant with the exception of two cars and some bowls filled with food and water. But upon closer inspection, feral cats of all kinds are hiding under the cars, in trees, and on the gates. These aren’t just any cats; they are working cats.

These once feral felines—stray cats that prefer to avoid human interaction—have only one job at the shelter: to keep rodents out, permanently.

Volunteers at Oakland Animal Services are starting a new working cats program to both boost cat adoptions and help control rodents in homes and businesses around the Bay Area. These cats are supposed to hunt rodents and scare off other cats from around their new homes. They’ll be vaccinated, spayed or neutered, microchipped and flea treated. Once adopted, they are meant to live outside with minimal care from their owners.

“It’s an ecological approach to pest control,” said Martha Cline, Oakland Animal Services’ animal placement coordinator and creator of the program. She says the main concept of the program is not only “saving cat’s lives, but actually placing them where people want them.”

According to Cline, the shelter’s staff decided to explore this new program because there were too many feral cats coming in that could not be given homes fast enough. Like many shelters, Oakland’s relies on other agencies, like the Tenth Life Foundation, to place the cats in a new home. But Tenth Life serves most of the Bay Area, which means that they have too many cats and not enough foster homes.

“They work with all of the shelters in the area, because we are not the only ones with the issue,” she said. “So they can’t really resolve our issues of having 30 feral cats and semi-feral cats.”

After deciding to start a working cats program, volunteers had to get funding and training. Maddie’s Fund—a multimillion-dollar foundation that supports animal welfare agencies and shelters—paid for Cline to go to Texas and observe a successful similar program. “They basically financed me to go out there for a week to learn how their program is set up, to see what things might be usable, to vet the program itself, to give feedback, and then to give us some tools to set up our own,” Cline said.

This initiative is different from other feral cat programs because it makes sure the animal has a home. The community cat program used by many shelters returns each animal to where it was found after it has been given all of the appropriate shots, neutered and flea treated. The goal of this kind of program is to reduce the number of feral cats that are born, but it doesn’t focus locating a new home for the cats after treatment.

According to Rebecca Katz, Oakland Animal Services director, putting the cat back in the same environment fails to consider other issues, like how people in the area feel about feral cats. “We also have a public health and public safety responsibility, as well, and many people don’t want cats—or an overabundance of cats—in their neighborhood,” she said.

Only feral cats are considered for the new working cats program, because they prefer to avoid human contact and would not make good house pets. But before a cat can be considered “workable,” there are several tests it must go through. Each cat is placed in a cage with a clear box and put in room filled with other caged feral and domestic cats. If the cat stays in the box as much as possible and hides from humans even when food is present, then it could be feral. Volunteers also perform eye and play tests on the cats to see how often they blink and if they’re playful. Cats that keep a constant gaze and are aggressive are likely feral, too.

Volunteers sometimes try to get the cat to play with a toy, pen or anything that may amuse a domestic cat, to see if it will grab at or mess around with the object.

“I’ve had many a pen thrown across the room by a feral that said, ‘Get that thing out of my way,’ and didn’t like the interaction,” Cline said.

Once the cat is fully vetted, it is ready to be sent to a home. These cats are implanted with microchips, so they can be tracked if they leave their new home, and fixed so they can’t produce any feral kittens. Also, working cats get an ear tipped—a vet removes a small piece of one ear—to indicate that the cat is no longer feral but “working.”

According to Katz, since these cats are extremely social with others of their kind, the program gives them out in twos.

Though adopting working cats is free, potential owners must go through a detailed process before getting one. After completing an online application, volunteers research the location of the applicant’s house to make sure the area is good for a feral cat. Ideal places are wide-open areas such as wineries or warehouses. The person is then interviewed about why they want a working cat and, if approved, they receive guidelines on taking care of one.

Though these cats don’t need any training, owners must put out food and water every day for their cat, so it will continue to come back. According to Katz, working cats will not return if they can get a constant supply of food elsewhere. “Not everybody recognizes that feral cats are cats, and they need care just like any other animal,” she said.

The Oakland Working Cats program is one of many programs that aim to move animals through the shelter quickly, in hopes of finding them homes faster. According to Cline, this allows volunteers to focus on the animals that need more attention.

Some other programs that have the same goal are the foster and transfer programs. The foster program allows animals to go to a temporary foster home, so they can enjoy life outside of the shelter and get exposure to potential adopting families. The transfer program allows animals to be transferred to another shelter in a different city or state, which may increase their adoption chances.

Animal lover Robert Baker owns nine cats and is an advocate of the new program. He and his wife often come to Oakland’s animal shelter and like to look at the animals while they wait to be helped by the staff. He doesn’t plan on getting any more cats, but thinks it’s for a good cause. “You’re giving these cats a home and it’s like a dual purpose, you know—they’re taking care of you and you’re taking care of them,” he said.

According to Cline, the program has been active for three months and they have received about seven applications from potential working cat adopters from all over the Bay Area, in both rural and urban neighborhoods. But so far, no working cats have left Oakland Animal Services. The staff wants to make sure each cat will go to the best place possible before sending them.

“We want to make sure it’s successful for the cat, and successful for the people who are adopting the cats,” Cline said.

10 Comments

  1. TNR Researcher on September 27, 2016 at 8:54 pm

    If your cats were only destroying invasive species (cats themselves being a noxious invasive species), then nobody would be complaining. But your vermin cats destroy anything that moves. Letting a cat roam free is absolutely no better and NO LESS CRIMINAL AND MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE than intentionally throwing rat-poison around on everyone’s property to kill any living thing. Your man-made vermin cats are now driving hundreds if not thousands of species of native animals to EXTINCTION across the whole planet. Have you no conscience nor morality left?

    Apparently gutting-alive and skinning-alive animals with everyone’s vermin cats, tortured to death just for your cats’ play-toys and YOUR entertainment, no other reason, is perfectly acceptable to you. Yeah, you’re all fine upstanding “animal-lovers” who respect all other lives around you and all other life on earth, aren’t you.

    Are you not even aware that Toxoplasma gondii oocysts when dried (and still viable) become aerosolized and drift on the wind? You can contract potentially-deadly T. gondii just from a cat-owner’s yard when it’s not been raining for a week and you inhale any air that passes over their land.

    Free-roaming cats and people improperly disposing of indoor-cats’ cat-litter are actually killing-off hundreds of rare marine-mammal species, even rare whales and your beloved manatees, (countless numbers of individual rare animals) on coastlines of all the world. A global ecological disaster worse than any oil-spill that has ever existed or could even be imagined. There are now harsh fines in areas of California for anyone found dumping cat-litter illegally — not in some environmentally-contained landfill. At least some of them “get it”.

    Birds are just a minor subset of all the thousands of native animal species (billions of individual animals) that criminally irresponsible cat-advocates are annihilating around the world with their man-made invasive species vermin cats.

    (copy and remove all spaces from any obfuscated-for-posting URLs)

    Not only are these demented invasive-species house-cats-ONLY “animal lovers” now killing off all Big Cats in all wildlife reserves around the world: thenational . Ae / news / uae-news / big-cat-owners-warned-to-keep-them-acres-away-from-feral-strays

    And for the ultimate example of absurdity and species-conservation irony, now making all moggie-licking residents of the UK (the inventors of that TNR insanity) the complete laughingstocks of the whole world, they’re already making their ONE AND ONLY NATIVE CAT SPECIES EXTINCT in the UK with their invasive species “moggies”: guardian . Co . Uk / environment / 2012 / sep / 16 / scottish-wildcat-extinction

    “A report, produced by the Scottish Wildcat Association, reviewed 2,000 records of camera trap recordings, eyewitness reports and road kills, and concluded there may be only about 40 wildcats left in Scotland in the wild today. ‘However you juggle the figures, it is hard to find anything positive,’ says Steve Piper, the association’s chairman. ‘The overwhelming evidence is that the wildcat is going to be extinct within months.'” … “However, it is not the loss of habitat that is causing the current cat crisis in the Cairngorms. It is the spread of the domestic cat.” … “‘Essentially the Highland wildcat is being eradicated by an alien invasive species: the domestic cat.'”

    That number is far below 35 left in the whole world today, and they keep insisting that their failed TNR ideology, that they’ve been practicing for over 60 YEARS (and managed to DOUBLE their vermin cat population by doing so), that TNR will still save their native Scottish Wildcats from extinction by their vermin invasive-species moggies. Insane doesn’t even begin to describe their Toxoplasma gondii inbred brain-damage.

    As well as killing off all their inland River Otters in England (and elsewhere) with their cats’ parasites: wildlifeextra . Com / go / news / otter-toxoplasmosis . html

    As well as cats’ parasites killing off all rare and endangered marine mammals on all coastlines around the world (worse than any oil-spill that has ever existed or could even be imagined):

    news . msn . com / science-technology / deadly-cat-feces-killing-thousands-of-marine-mammals
    environmentalhealthnews . Org / ehs / news / hawaiian-monk-seals

    And these cat-licking “animal lover” psychopaths and sociopaths are also killing off all the Mountain Lions (Cougars, Puma, Endangered Florida Panther, etc.), and all other native cat species in North America: rapidcityjournal . Com / sports / local / feral-cats-pose-threat-to-birds-lions / article_8ec451c9-4b03-55a3-baa7-71ac577905cb . html

    But now these cat-lickers are even killing off rare whales and causing massive birth-defects in the indigenous Inuit people who depend on seal-meat for their very survival. Seals that were infected (and are also dying-off) from these cat-lickers’ cats’ parasites.

    Cat parasite found in western Arctic Beluga deemed infectious news . ubc . Ca / 2014 / 02 / 13 / bigthaw /

    Let’s thank these psychotic bible-home-schooled cat-lickers for all the fine work they do for being such fantastic “animal lovers”, shall we? THEY JUST LOVE CATS SO MUCH! So caring! So thoughtful! So intelligent! So FULL of love for living things! So much so that they will even sacrifice whole races of humans to death-by-birth-defect to prove how much they love their cats.

    I’d love to thank them all, each with a gift of a solitary-confinement prison-cell — FOR LIFE. Better yet, for their VAST ecological crimes and sins against all of nature and all of humanity, hanged-until-dead would be a far more fitting “gift” for them AND the whole planet. That used to be the punishment for engaging in bio-warfare against the human population and all other animal life in any country. I say bring it back — special, just for them.



  2. TNR Researcher on September 27, 2016 at 8:56 pm

    Here’s a good read to show you what happens to every last one of these relocated invasive-species community-vermin cats that people dump-off on farms and in other rural areas in ANY location of North America. (And, as I recently discovered; in Canada, the UK, and probably worldwide — they’d be fools not to.)

    predatormastersforums . com / forums / ubbthreads . php ? ubb=showflat & Number=2628942 & page=1

    All you are doing is adding to the cat-shooting quotas of everyone who lives rural. What a nice waste of your money and time. I personally shot and buried literally hundreds of these invasive-species vermin cats to stop them from gutting-alive and skinning-alive the last of the native wildlife on my lands. Cats adopted by pavement-brained fools (who bought 3-10 acre hobby-farms) from “humane” barn-cat programs ran by equally pavement-brained morons. Many hunting-forums even pass along contact information of any new “barn cat programs” — for free delivery of FREE practice-targets between hunting seasons. I don’t condone this, because if they miss then I have to shoot them myself when they wander into my own lands. “Hello? Yes, I have a bad rodent problem out here in the country. Can you bring out about 6 of your cats? Thanks!” (A week later: BANG! BANG! Dāmņ, missed one. BANG! BANG! BANG!) Your cats are “valuable”, alright. But not in any way that you might ever think.

    Cats that are relocated NEVER stay where they have been dumped. This is why you read reports of cats trying to get back to their points of origin hundreds of miles away. All the while senselessly destroying countless numbers of valuable native wildlife in their wake by torturing animals to death for their hourly play-toys. People in rural areas have enough of their own problem keeping these disease-infested vermin in check by shooting every stray cat they see (if only to protect their own animals and cats from the 3dozen+ deadly zoonotic diseases these free-roaming pestilent vermin cats carry and spread to all other animals and humans today).

    You needn’t go adding to everyone’s weekly cat-shooting-quotas by releasing more of these pestilent vermin. “Cute” they are not. They ALL need to be destroyed. There are dozens of native predator species that are MUCH better suited for rodent control. Ones that eat rodents only and don’t destroy everything that moves, like cats do. There’s a good reason one species was even named the Barn-Owl, another the Rat-Snake. Gray-Fox being another excellent mouser, they don’t even have European fowl on their menus and will even climb trees to keep squirrel populations in check. Even the 1.75-inch Masked-Shrew, a David & Goliath success story, evolved a poisonous bite specifically for preying on rodents right where they breed. Even the scent of these miniature marvels being around drives away rodents. But what do their cats do? They destroy these most beneficial of all rodent predators the very first chance they get.

    Criminally irresponsible cat-hoarders need to become responsible stewards of this planet by getting at least a high-school level of education in matters of ecology and biology so the rest of us don’t have to teach you a valuable lesson by shooting and burying every last one of your invasive species vermin cats for you.

    You might also enjoy knowing …

    If people advocate for cats as rodent-control on farms and ranches they’ve already doomed them to being destroyed by drowning or shooting when it becomes a financial liability more than any asset. Ranchers and farmers worldwide are fully aware that cats’ Toxoplasma gondii parasite can cause the very same birth defects (hydrocephaly and microcephaly), still-births, and miscarriages in their livestock and important wildlife as it can in pregnant women. Consequently, this is also how this cats’ brain-parasite gets into your meats and onto your dinner-tables, from herbivores ingesting this cat-parasites’ oocysts in the soils, transferred to the plants and grains that they eat. Herbivores can contract this parasite in NO OTHER WAY. Not even washing your hands in bleach nor hydrochloric-acid will destroy this parasites’ oocysts if you have contracted it from your garden or yard that a cat has defecated in.

    This is why any cats are ROUTINELY destroyed around gestating livestock and wildlife-management areas in the most efficient, humane, and least-expensive method available. Common rural practice everywhere. The risk of financial loss from dead livestock and important native wildlife from an invasive-species cat is far too great to do otherwise. This cats’ parasite is now even killing off rare marine-mammals (dolphins, seals, otters, and even rare whales) along all coastal regions around the world from run-off containing this cat-parasites’ oocysts. Letting your vermin cats roam free is absolutely no better and just as criminal and morally reprehensible as throwing indiscriminate rat-poison around on everyone’s property, and indeed the whole planet.

    Children on farms and ranches also learn how to be a good steward of their lands when it comes to invasive domesticated species like cats, with one simple statement from the ecologically responsible parents (those who are directly dependent upon the very lands on which they live, including yourselves), “If you see a cat more’n 100 yards from any building, shoot it! It’s up to no good.” They don’t bother with expensive spaying and neutering cats, that’s too time consuming and costly for a work-cat that’s not doing its proper job. That’s how animals are “domesticated” in the very first place; keep-alive that which benefits humans, destroy the genetic lines of that which does not. The very same way that you got your vermin man-made cats in the very first place.

    The next time cat-lickers bite into that whole-grain veggie-muffin or McBurger, they need to just envision biting down on a shot-dead or drowned kitten or cat. For that’s precisely how that food supply got to their mouths — whether they want to face up to it or not. It’s not going to change reality no matter how much they twist their mind away from the truth of their world.

    If you want to blame someone for the drowning and shooting of cats, you need to prosecute yourselves — every time you eat. Enjoy your next meal! At least 1 cat paid for it with its life.



  3. TNR Researcher on September 27, 2016 at 8:57 pm

    An important message and public-service announcement for anyone who promotes, practices, allows, condones, supports, finances, or in any way allows any TNR ideology and practices in your community or engages in any part of any TNR ideology or practices in your community:

    Any of those cats taken from outdoors that you want to put-up for adoption, or anyone ever coming in contact with any of their community-vermin-cats, without knowing their vaccination history since birth nor what exposure they’ve had to any diseases while unsupervised, really need to be accompanied by this disclaimer and have it signed by the adopter. (Unless all legislators and TNR-cat-hoarders want to be sued so hard and deep someday that they lose everything in their lives for the rest of their sorry, ignorant, disney-cartoon-educated, and criminally-negligent useless lives.)

    WARNING:

    This cat may be harboring rabies that will be discovered up to 11 months from now, in one rare case 6 years. The typical incubation period for rabies runs 21 to 240 days. Hence, the usual legal 6-month (183 day) quarantine for possible rabies infections in any animals — that duration is just beyond the peak of this incubation-range curve. A 6-month quarantine is still not safe, it’s just “safer”. [Note: this cat also wasn’t tested for any other of the 3dozen+ zoonotic diseases cats spread to all other animals and humans today. Many being deadly (up to cats spreading “The Plague” today, cats are today’s #1 vector in plague transmission to humans), some of these even listed as bio-terrorism agents for not having vaccines against them. It was not tested because we don’t care if you nor any of your family-pets contract any of them.]

    Keep in mind that giving a wild-harvested cat a rabies-shot does not cure it of rabies if it already has rabies — nor are rabies-vaccines at all effective on the undeveloped immune systems of kittens. This cat or kitten may or may not show any symptoms of harboring rabies up to the point of its death. Not all animals exhibit the so-called “furious rabies” symptoms during the 2 weeks before death from rabies. 1 out of 5 (~20%) of all rabid animals only exhibit minor symptoms of lethargy, paralysis, or disorientation; called “dumb rabies” or “paralytic rabies”. (Can you actually tell when your new cat (or even known cat) is acting dumb from deadly rabies instead of just its usual dumb behavior? Most likely not.) We have no way of accurately testing for rabies by keeping this cat alive. And since we are cat-hoarding sociopaths and psychopaths who care more about the life of this cat than your own, more than the life of any other human or other animals on earth, we also didn’t quarantine it in a government-supervised double-walled enclosure system for a period of not less than 6-months before handing it over to you — as required by all national and international pet-trade, import/export, and animal-transport laws. Many rabid cats have been adopted-out from TNR colonies. This resulting in the adopters having to obtain post-exposure rabies shots costing them in excess of $5,000 per family member. As well as costing over $1,000 per month, for a period not less than 6 months, for quarantining each family pet that came in contact with the rabid cat that was adopted from an outdoor source — just like we adopt them out with our own criminal-negligence. If you adopted a cat from us and it dies from rabies you must pay for all these costs on your own. In one well-known case the family who adopted one of these rabid cats from a shelter’s TNR program went into bankruptcy to handle the costs — just so you know..

    You should also know that you are at more than 4-times greater risk of contracting rabies from any cat today due to these highly illegal TNR (trap, neuter, re-abandon) programs and all stray cats than any other domesticated animal. This is precisely why even the CDC has issued warnings against the implementation of these failed and highly illegal TNR programs.

    We assume absolutely no legal, moral, nor ethical responsibility for rabies nor any other of the 3dozen+ potentially deadly zoonotic diseases, for which this cat was not tested, now being in your home or killing any of your family or other animals. That shall be and will be your problem and your problem alone! Because, let’s face up to the truth of the matter, WE JUST DON’T CARE IF YOU NOR ANYTHING ELSE ON EARTH LIVES OR DIES. We only need to dump off one of our unwanted disease-infested community-vermin cats on you just so we can try to feel good about ourselves for once in our typically meaningless and useless lives.

    Enjoy your new kitty!

    Signed: __________________ Dated: __________________



  4. TNR Researcher on September 27, 2016 at 8:58 pm

    The myth about cats being good rodent control has been disproved on every island where cats were imported to take care of the imported rodents. Hundreds of years later and there’s nothing but a thriving population of cats and rodents — all the native wildlife on those islands now either extinct or on the brink of extinction — even those native species which are better rodent predators than cats (such as many reptiles and shrews which destroy rodents right in their nests), the cats having destroyed them directly or indirectly.

    The rodents reproduce in burrows and holes out of the reach of cats, where they are happy to reproduce forever to entertain cats the rest of their lives, and make your own lives miserable, on into infinity. On top of that, when cats infect rodents with cat’s Toxoplasma gondii parasite, this hijacks the minds of rodents to make the rodents attracted to where cats urinate. (remove all spaces from obfuscated-for-posting URLs) scitizen . com / neuroscience / parasite-hijacks-the-mind-of-its-host_a-23-509 . html

    Cats actually attract disease-carrying rodents to where cats are. The cats then contract these diseases on contact with, or being in proximity to, these rodents. Like “The Black Death”, the plague, that is now being transmitted to humans in N. America directly from cats that have contracted it from rodents. Yes, “The Black Death” (the plague) is alive and well today and being spread by people’s cats this time around. Totally disproving that oft-spewed LIE about having more cats in Europe could have prevented the plague — more cats would have made it far far worse. Many people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA in the last 2-3 decades; all three forms of it transmitted by CATS — septicemic, bubonic, and pneumonic. For a fun read, one of hundreds of cases, Cat-Transmitted Fatal Pneumonic Plague — ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / pubmed / 8059908

    abcdcatsvets . org / yersinia-pestis-infection /
    “Recommendations to avoid zoonotic transmission:
    Cats are considered the most important domestic animal involved in plague transmission to humans, and in endemic areas, outdoor cats may transmit the infection to their owners or to persons caring for sick cats (veterinarians and veterinary nurses).”

    Cats attracting these adult rodents right to them further increasing the cat/rodent/disease density of this happy predator/prey balance. It has been documented many many times — the more cats you have the more rodents and diseases you get. I even proved this to myself when having to rid my lands of hundreds of these vermin cats by shooting and burying every last one of them. A rodent problem started to appear about the same time the cats started to show up, 15 years of it. And, if you check the history of Disney’s feral cat problem, their rodent problem also started to appear at the very same time their cats showed-up. Coincidence? Not at all. (BTW: All cat-advocates’ beloved Disney’s TNR cats are no more, they’ve all been destroyed by hired exterminators last year. Disney finally wised-up.) All rodent problems around my home completely disappeared after every last cat was shot-dead and safely disposed of. All the better NATIVE rodent predators moved back into the area after the cats were dead and gone. Not seen one cat anywhere nor had even one rodent in the house in over seven years now. (So much for their manipulative, deceptive, and outright lie of the mythical “vacuum effect” too.)

    Cats DO NOT get rid of rodents. I don’t care how many centuries that blathering FOOLS will claim that cats keep rodents in-check, they’ll still be wrong all these centuries. Civilizations of humans have come and gone in great cities like Egypt, yet their cats and rodents remain in even greater pestilent numbers.

    No cat population anywhere has ever been able to control rodents effectively, in fact cats only attract a rodent problem. But native predators can get rid of rodents — easily.

    There are dozens of native predator species that are MUCH better suited for rodent control. Ones that eat rodents only and don’t destroy everything that moves, like cats do. There’s a good reason one species in N. America was even named the Barn-Owl. Another named the Rat-Snake. Gray-Fox being another excellent mouser and ratter, they don’t even have European fowl on their menus and will even climb trees to keep squirrel populations in check. (The only fox species known to climb trees. A family of them made a den near my home after every last cat was dead and gone.) Even the 1.75-inch Masked-Shrew, a David & Goliath success story, evolved a poisonous bite specifically for preying on rodents right where they breed. Even the scent of these miniature marvels being around drives away rodents. But what do their disease-infested invasive-species vermin cats do? They destroy these most beneficial of all rodent predators the very first chance they get.



  5. TNR Researcher on September 27, 2016 at 9:03 pm

    Any of those cats taken from outdoors without knowing their complete vaccination history or without knowing their exposure to any diseases need to be tested for ALL of the following diseases; or I hope the recipient of one of them that is adopted-out or someone coming in contact with their disease-infested cats sues their city, their county, their state, all legislators, any morally-corrupt veterinarians benefiting from this INHUMANE practice, and every last conniving and manipulative cat-hoarding TNR practitioner so deep that they never recover from it for the rest of their criminally negligent and criminally irresponsible sorry-excuses for lives. (For just one example of THOUSANDS, not long ago businesses in Miami were ruined by caretakers of feral-cats spreading hookworm in all the beaches. Lawsuits aplenty!)

    These are just the diseases these invasive species vermin cats have been spreading to humans, not counting the ones they spread to all wildlife. THERE ARE NO VACCINES against many of these, and are in-fact listed as bio-terrorism agents. They include: Afipia felis, Anthrax, Bartonella (Rochalimaea) henselae (Cat-Scratch Disease), Bergeyella (Weeksella) zoohelcum, Campylobacter Infection, Chlamydia psittaci (feline strain), Cowpox, Coxiella burnetti Infection (Q fever), Cryptosporidium Infection, Cutaneous larva migrans, Dermatophytosis, Dipylidium Infection (tapeworm), Hookworm Infection, Leptospira Infection, Giardia, Neisseria canis, Pasteurella multocida, Plague, Poxvirus, Rabies, Rickettsia felis, Ringworm, Salmonella Infection, Scabies, Sporothrix schenckii, Toxocara Infection, Toxoplasmosis, Trichinosis, Visceral larva migrans, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. [Centers for Disease Control, July 2010] Bird-flu, Bovine Tuberculosis, Sarcosporidiosis, Flea-borne Typhus, Tularemia, and Rat-Bite Fever can now also be added to that list.

    Yes, “The Black Death” (the plague) is alive and well today and being spread by people’s cats this time around. Many people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA; all three forms of it transmitted by CATS — septicemic, bubonic, and pneumonic. For a fun read, one of hundreds of cases, Cat-Transmitted Fatal Pneumonic Plague — http : / / www . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / pubmed / 8059908
    (remove all spaces from obfuscated-for-posting URLs)

    http : / / www . abcdcatsvets . org / yersinia-pestis-infection
    “Recommendations to avoid zoonotic transmission:
    Cats are considered the most important domestic animal involved in plague transmission to humans, and in endemic areas, outdoor cats may transmit the infection to their owners or to persons caring for sick cats (veterinarians and veterinary nurses).”

    You did know too, didn’t you, that giving a rabies shot to a cat that already has rabies does not cure it of rabies? Nor are rabies vaccines effective at all on the undeveloped immune systems of kittens. Google for: RABID KITTEN ADOPTED WAKE COUNTY (for just one example of hundreds of rabid cats adopted from outdoors, given their rabies shot, but still transmitting and then dying from rabies). The incubation period for rabies is, on average, from 21 to 240 days, sometimes up to 11 months, one rare case being 6 years. A vetted cat can STILL transmit rabies many months later (during the last 2 weeks before it dies of rabies, sometimes not even showing any symptoms up to the point of its death) if it was harvested from unknown rabies-exposure conditions with an unknown vaccination history. May one of those cats that they adopt-out have rabies too. Is their liability insurance in excess of $10M? Either quarantine them for 6 or more months in a government-supervised double-walled enclosure system at their OWN expense (as required by national and international pet-trade, import/export, and animal-transport laws), or euthanize them. Those are everyone’s only 2 options to be relatively certain they are not handing rabies to someone. Isn’t reality fun?

    Google for: RABIES PROMPTS CARLSBAD TNR CAT PROGRAM SUSPENSION

    Rabies outbreak caused by TNR! 50+ pets euthanized. ALL stray cats destroyed. All livestock destroyed. More than a dozen homeowners pay for their own $5,000-$8,000 rabies shots for EACH family member.

    Google for: Rabies Outbreak in Westchester County

    Google for: Rabid Kitten Jamestown Exposure

    There’s hundreds more like those on the net showing everyone how these phenomenally ignorant and foolish cat-lickers “help” their communities by allowing TNR CAT-HOARDERS to continue their criminally negligent behavior. And contrary to these cat-lickers’ perpetual LIES, feeding stray cats TRAINS them to approach humans for food. What do you think happens to the child or foolish adult that reaches down to try to pet or pick up that now seemingly friendly “cute kitty” that just approached them? The wild animal lashes out and bites or scratches the hand that has no food for them. Resulting in $5,000-$8,000 rabies shots for each victim of a cat-feeder’s criminally negligent behavior, paid for out of the victim’s OWN pockets. Two reports even document rabid cats entering a pet-door and one even came through the family’s ceiling in search of human supplied foods, the attack so bad that the whole family required hospitalization.

    Thanks to TNR practices and free-roaming cats you are now FOUR TIMES MORE LIKELY to contract rabies from any cat than ANY OTHER domesticated animal. This is why even the CDC has issued direct warnings against the use of these failed TNR programs anywhere and everywhere: http : / / onlinelibrary . wiley . com / doi / 10 . 1111 / zph . 12070 / abstract



  6. TNR Researcher on September 27, 2016 at 9:04 pm

    Then there’s cats’ most insidious disease of all, their Toxoplasma gondii parasite that cats spread through their feces into all other animals. This is how humans get it in their dinner-meats, cats roaming around stockyards and farms (herbivores can contract this parasite in no other way). This is why cats are routinely destroyed around gestating livestock or important wildlife by shooting or drowning them. So those animals won’t suffer from the same things that can happen to the fetus of any pregnant woman. (Miscarriages, still-births, hydrocephaly, and microcephaly.) It can make you blind or even kill you at any time during your life once you’ve been infected. It becomes a permanent lifetime parasite in your mind, killing you when your immune system becomes compromised by disease or chemo and immunosuppressive therapies. It can last over 18 months in any soils or waters and not even washing your hands or garden vegetables in bleach will destroy the oocysts. During dry-spells of weather (or inside low-humidity homes) when the oocysts become dessicated you can even contract T. gondii by just inhaling the air wherever any cats have defecated and the oocysts have become airborne/aerosolized. Contrary to cat-lickers’ self-deceptive myths, a cat can become reinfected many times during its life and spread millions of oocysts each time. It’s now linked to the cause of autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia, memory-loss, and brain cancers; as well as increasing the suicide rate in women almost 2-fold even though they’ve never suffered from any mental or emotional health issues previously. This parasite is also killing off rare and endangered marine-mammals (all the way up to rare whales) along all coastlines, along with inland river-otters, from cats’ T. gondii oocysts in run-off from the land, the oocysts surviving even in saltwater. A catastrophic ecological disaster of multi-continent-sized proportions worse than any oil-spill that has ever existed or could even be imagined.

    Its strange life cycle is meant to infect rodents. Any rodents infected with it lose their fear of cats and are attracted to cat urine. http : / / scitizen . com / neuroscience / parasite-hijacks-the-mind-of-its-host_a-23-509 . html

    Cats attract rodents to your home with their whole slew of diseases (like The Plague from rats and fleas, many people have died from cat-transmitted Plague in the USA already, it is alive and well and being spread by cats today). If you want rodents in your home keep cats outside of it to attract diseased rodents to your area. I experienced this phenomenon (as have many others), and all rodent problems disappeared after I shot and buried every last one of hundreds of cats on my lands. Much better NATIVE rodent predators returned to my lands, rather than these man-made cats that were just attracting more rodents.

    Another interesting experiment. They wanted to find out if dogs could possibly transmit cat-shat Toxoplasma gondii oocysts. A dog infected with T. gondii from a source-cat cannot. The oocyst stage of this parasite’s life-cycle by which cats spread their parasite into all other animals is 100%-dependent on cat-physiology as its primary reproductive host. But if dogs ingest oocyst-laden cat-feces then dogs can pass the oocysts produced by cats & their common brain-hijacking parasite. http : / / www . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / pubmed / 9477489?dopt=Abstract&holding=f1000,f1000m,isrctn

    It is interesting to note that these Toxoplasma gondii oocysts shed by cats can even survive the hydrochloric stomach acids for the duration that they remain in a mammal’s digestive tract. And then they doubt my words when I tell them of the studies where they found that this parasite’s oocysts (seeds) can even survive washing your hands in bleach. You could wash your hands and garden vegetables in hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes for the same duration that food remains in an animal’s digestive tract and even that won’t destroy it. Your hands would be dissolved into a digestible pulp long before you could kill the Toxoplasma gondii oocysts.

    Yeah, “basic hygiene” is going to keep your kids safe from going blind sometime during their life, becoming autistic, schizophrenic, get ADHD, suffer from epilepsy, get brain-cancers, debilitating depressions, suffer from memory-loss, commit unexplained suicides, have bouts of Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED), suffer from other neurological illnesses, or die if they ever require any immunosuppressive therapies or contract any immunity-compromising diseases during their lifetime if they had ever played in a sandbox that a neighbor’s cat has defecated in.

    Go ahead everyone, drink the cat-lickers’ Kool-Aid.

    Someone who will save the life of one of their clearly expendable vermin cats over yours is not to be trusted by any other human alive on this planet. Even cat-lickers can’t trust their fellow cat-lickers to save each others’ lives when it comes right down to it. Truth is, they’d even rather that their own family and friends die (if they have any) than any of their deadly disease-infested cats. Sociopaths and psychopaths, one and all, right to their very cores.



  7. we~they on October 27, 2016 at 10:33 pm

    @TNR Researcher, Really?



  8. David Seben on October 28, 2016 at 4:49 am

    This guy didn’t get his coco puffs!



  9. Berkeley Biology Major on October 28, 2016 at 7:32 am

    Cat-love is blind. Thanks, TNR Researcher, for presenting the other side in such graphic detail.

    We~they: yes, really.



  10. […] Rodent problem? Feral cats touted as eco-friendly pest control in Oakland by Cameron Clark […]



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