 "Photo: Noah Peters")
Lounging on the grass at Waterview, peering from flower beds on the mall and hiding underneath tanks at the energy plant, the feline presence is a reminder that campus is not an office park, but a dynamic residence for both human and beast.
UTD Facilities Management (FM) officials hope to begin a program to care for the resident feral cat colony on campus, but need student support to implement a feeding program similar to successful animal care programs found on other college campuses in Texas.
Sam Eicke, superintendent of maintenance and construction for FM, said UTD is home to up to 12 feral cats with defined territories.
"In the old days, you'd trap them and get rid of them. But if you make them healthy and spay or neuter them, then they take over a territory just like lions do and they protect that territory against all comers. They keep out snakes, rodents, skunks, other cats, small dogs-anything that comes into their territory," Eicke said.
Eicke said a feral cat population was inevitable on a residential campus because domesticated cats run away, come in from surrounding neighborhoods, or are abandoned by students. UTD's intricate underground complex of tunnels and sewer drains provide an optimum breeding ground for the cats because they're warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
UNT, Trinity University and many other campuses and communities nationwide have well-established feral cat programs. UNT's Feral Cat Rescue Group uses the "trap-neuter-return" approach FM hopes to employ at UTD. Trinity's Cat Alliance has offered to send volunteers to help establish a feral cat group at UTD. Student groups on these campuses raise funds and maintain feeding stations with food and water. Feeding feral cats keeps them in their defined territories away from trash cans and dumpsters and prevents them from fighting over resources.
Alleycat.org, a national nonprofit clearinghouse for information on feral and stray cats, advocates the trap-neuter-return plan to humanely reduce feral cat populations. This plan includes trapping, medical evaluation, vaccination and sterilization by veterinarians. Truly feral cats are then returned to their territories, but kittens and cats recently separated from owners may be eligible for adoption.
Eicke said FM will be responsible for trapping the cats and will not ask students to handle any animals. Local veterinarians have offered to sterilize the feral cats for about $15. Veterinarians clip the tip of a cat's left ear while the animal is under general anesthesia for spaying or neutering. "Ear tipping" indicates that the animal is part of a managed colony.
"We can trap and transport the animals with our funding, but we can't take on the cost of feeding with state funds. That needs to happen through an organization or a student group," Eicke said.
Once a group takes on the project, Eicke said students can receive community service hours for filling feeding stations and other program-related work.
"There are at least 80 million feral cats in this country, probably more," said Nancy Kelly, academic counselor in the School Of Visual Arts at the University of North Texas and director of UNT's Feral Cat Rescue Group and Campus Cat Coalition. "Any place you have a transient population-corporate campuses, malls, colleges, any place with cars, cats are brought in by residents, come in from surrounding areas and even get in the wheel wells of vehicles and move around," Kelly said.
Kelly said feral cats can't be adopted because they weren't socialized as kittens and don't bond to humans. If feral cats are trapped and put down, more cats move in to fill the vacuum. For that reason, euthanizing feral cats is a more expensive plan because it requires constant trapping and often leads to public outcry.
When UNT's feral cat program began, there were more than 100 cats living on the UNT campus. They were blamed for upended garbage cans and flea-infested buildings. None were neutered or vaccinated. The group now estimates that 35-45 cats live on the Denton campus and all or most have been vaccinated for rabies and spayed or neutered.
Vaccinating feral cats against rabies then returning them to their territory, Kelly said, is the best way to balance public health concerns with the inevitable presence of feral cat colonies.
"The trap-neuter-return approach is economical, but it's also humane. Campuses are going to have feral cats-they can either be healthy and not breed, or they can be unhealthy and breed. Those are the only options. We created the problem, and we have to fix it," Kelly said.
Contact Sam Eicke at seicke@utdallas.edu or call 972-883-2141 for more information about the possible feral cat program at UTD.
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