If a feline is seen out in the snow, some people would look at it with pity and offer it something to eat, and others would shake their heads and see it as another furry nuisance. What to do about them is a community issue.

"If you're feeding, you need to take the next step and trap them and get them neutered," said Dr. Jennifer L. Fry, a veterinarian who is executive director of Fairchild Foundation, a feral cat trap-neuter-return organization. "You don't want them to continue to reproduce. I know it's hard for people to not feed, but if you're not going to take the next step and sterilize them and care for them properly, you really shouldn't be feeding them."

There are groups of free-roaming felines, known as feral cat colonies, throughout Berks, and some are managed by caregivers. Management of a feral cat colony includes sterilizing and vaccinating the group through trap-neuter-return in addition to feeding the cats and providing shelter, according to local trap-neuter-return advocates.

Fry, 38, of Cumru Township worked at Antietam Valley Animal Hospital, St. Lawrence, for seven years before opening her own clinic, Banfield The Pet Hospital of Pottstown, in North Coventry Township, Montgomery County, in 2005.

Cats that roam the outdoors fall into one of three categories: they are owned, and their owners allow them to come and go from the home; they are not owned, but someone feeds them and they interact with humans, typically called a stray; they are feral and do not willingly interact with humans.

Webster's New World College Dictionary defines feral as 1. a) untamed; wild b) having returned to a wild condition 2. savage; fierce.

The line blurs when a person starts feeding homeless cats. There may be some friendly cats that consent to petting and some truly feral cats, ones that humans can't interact with at all.

"I think there are a lot of places that have overpopulation problems," Fry said. "There are a lot of reasons. It's multi-factorial.

"It stems from lack of education. People don't understand kittens can go into heat and start reproducing as young as 4 months. They don't also understand that when a female cat does go into heat, it can be annoying. When a male tomcat gets a little older, he can start spraying. A lot of people may get the cute, cuddly kittens and then have the unwanted behaviors. Then it's easier to say 'Oh, let's let them outside so they don't spray in the house, or so we don't listen to them yowl all night' and then the next thing you know, they get pregnant."

"Feeding the cats makes them healthier, so they have larger litters which leads to more unwanted breeding-associated behaviors, including fighting, yowling and urinary marking," wrote Dr. Lee Pickett, an independent Bern Township veterinarian who writes the "Ask the Vet's Pets" column that appears Fridays in the Reading Eagle. "If people choose to feed feral cats, they also need to sterilize them and vaccinate them for rabies."

Pickett, 58, volunteers for spay and neuter clinics and had started a feral cat sterilization program at the Humane Society of Berks County, 1801 N. 11th St., but that was ended in 2009. Pickett resigned as a staff veterinarian at the HSBC in September.

"We referred all feral spay/neuter out to other organizations which focused exclusively on ferals in 2010 so that we could focus on sterilizing all our animals prior to adoption," wrote Karel Minor, executive director of the HSBC, in an e-mail interview. "Prior to that (when there were fewer options available to the public) we did a single day a month and did anywhere from a couple to a dozen a month. We found that there was an inconsistent flow of cats, which made scheduling and cost control an issue."

The Animal Rescue League of Berks County, Cumru Township, did not respond to a question about the total number of feral cat sterilizations the organization was involved with in 2010.

The Fairchild Foundation conducts its sterilization clinic once a month at the Animal Rescue League. Dr. Shannon Brockmeier of VCA Sinking Spring in Lower Heidelberg Township joins Fry each month to perform surgery at the clinics and they are occasionally joined by others. There is only room for three vets to operate at one time, Fry said.

"We've been doing it over at the Rescue League for about three years," Fry said. "Ideally, what we would like to do is get a building so we can expand. There is a huge demand and a huge need. But if we had a building of our own so we could become more well known, we could get more volunteers, we could get more funding, we could help more."

During a Nov. 21 clinic at the ARL, Fry said her group sterilized 42 cats. For the year, Fairchild Foundation sterilized 223 feral cats and vaccinated another 41 that had already been fixed.

This summer, Allentown-based No Nonsense Neutering began servicing Berks County. Operation Catsnip was launched in Berks by Shelly Nowotarski, 42, of Bern Township who fostered a partnership between NNN and One By One Cat Rescue, where she is a volunteer.

Nowotarski arranged for cats to be dropped off at her husband's business, Specialty Rigging Co. in Muhlenberg Township, then shuttled to NNN's surgical facilities.

According to Martha Kahan, 59, president of NNN, 150 cats (pets and ferals) were sterilized during Operation Catsnip. The organization has sterilized more than 10,000 animals since it was founded in 2008, she said. In the fall, NNN began leasing space at the ARL in Cumru Township to conduct low-cost spay and neuter clinics in Berks. They sterilize feral cats, pet cats and pet dogs. The clinics are held twice a month by appointment. Upcoming dates are Jan. 23, Feb. 13 and Feb. 27.

For trap-neuter-return to work, people have to be educated and involved.

Nowotarski is relatively new to TNR. She was introduced to the program when she contacted NNN in 2010. She maintains one feral cat colony in Spring Township and provides guidance to other caregivers.

"I noticed the cats near a restaurant when I was there eating one evening and decided something had to be done," wrote Nowotarski in response to e-mailed questions. "After we spoke for awhile, it was realized that their pest control supplier had commented on the fact that they have not found any mice or rodents at their establishment in many months. So apparently, the cats were providing organic pest control! It was agreed that the current colony was tolerable if we could keep those numbers where they were and prevent more. We started trapping in July or August and have trapped, spayed/neutered and vaccinated nine of the 15 cats in the colony."

While there are many managed feral cat colonies in Berks, there are many unmanaged groups. Fry said she has been told there is a group of around 100 cats near Carpenter Technology in northwest Reading, but no one is doing TNR there.

"We currently have about 45 colonies that we are helping," Fry said of the Fairchild Foundation.

Safe Cat Network Inc., Wyomissing, which provides traps for TNR and feral cat colony management guidance, said the yearly average for caregivers who contact the organization ranges anywhere from 15 to 50. The organization reported 38 caregivers contacted the organization in 2010.

The largest feral cat colony that Fairchild Foundation has helped had 65 cats, Fry said, noting a few others have numbered 30 to 40, but the average is about 15 cats.

Originally Published: 1/14/2011	Share5
Birth control used to help reduce cat colony reproduction
Susan Miers Smith  Reading Eagle
Oral birth control is used as an additional method to prevent births in some feral cat colonies until all cats can be surgically sterilized. The Fairchild Foundation provides megestrol acetate, available as Ovaban for animals and its human counterpart Megace, to its feral cat managers to administer while cats are being collected for sterilization said Dr. Jennifer L. Fry, executive director. "We're probably one of the few groups that does that," Fry said. "Some people don't agree with that because it's not the way to solve the problem. We understand that. Six litters less being born until we can get them all sterilized is a whole lot less to worry about, however. "What we have the caregivers of the colony do is mix the liquid (we actually use the human generic) with canned food and spread it throughout multiple plates." Fry said it does not hurt males to ingest the drug, and that the drug actually has been prescribed to treat spraying of urine - also known as marking - in males. The birth control is not infallible, but is worth doing, according to Fry. "It's not foolproof, because you're not individually dosing each cat," she said. "It definitely has reduced the numbers and it helps. It is not the end solution." Another feline contraceptive is also on the market: FeralStat. It contains the same synthetic hormone as Ovaban. FeralStat and Ovaban are available only through prescription by a veterinarian. As with all oral contraceptives, side effects are possible with the use of megestrol acetate. Fry said the benefits far outweight the side effects, however.