That’s where visiting, as well as resident, bird watchers in Cape May, New Jersey may find themselves unless they watch their steps. As most know by now, Cape May has a feral cat problem – problem being defined as large colonies of feral cats in and around the city, including near significant shorebird breeding areas.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants the cat colonies moved to help protect the breeding shorebirds. Advocates for “free range felines” tout the city’s “trap, neuter, release” program as entirely suitable for control and maintenance of the cat population. As it seems that there are as many feral cats there now as there ever were the twelve year program indeed seems to be successful – if you’re raising cats.
In truth I feel a teensy bit sorry for the city council of Cape May. Faced with a large mobilized assembly of ardent animal advocates (domestic breeds at least), the council balked at its recent meeting when it was faced with making the decision to move the cat colonies. After all, no one wants to be seen as being heartless to the “wittle kitties.” Pets are essentialy a religion to Americans; you might as well ask a council member to pee on a flag publicly as ask them to vote to do anything to an animal resembling Fluffy or Fido that might involve the potential for lethal controls becoming involved. Myself, I would ask nothing more than the same regulations for control being in place on these invasive species mammals as exist and are frequently enforced toward the control of invasive species birds such as European Starlings of House Sparrows.
I suppose on the bright side, given that the people have indeed spoken, as judged by their turn-out at the council meeting, perhaps Cape May could shift their tourism efforts to accommodate the new publicly declared will of their population – a cat watching festival perhaps. Thousands of cat fanciers from around the world could come to Cape May to view and fill up their life cat list. I can hear them exclaiming now, “I went to Cape May and saw a male Abyssinian and two Russian Blues!”
Peace and good bird watching.
