Cat Rescue Maritimes is desperately looking for more volunteers as it struggles to respond to a “staggering” number of feral cat colonies across the region.
Sue Knight, president of Cat Rescue Maritimes (CARMA), said that the volunteer-based not-for-profit needs more volunteers in rural communities across the Maritimes to step up and help.
“We need that community to put together a group to go out and identify that colony, assess how many are there and trap them and get a local vet on side to do the neuters and spays,” said Knight.
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She said there are not enough volunteers to help care for the more than 100,000 feral cats that are roaming wild in New Brunswick and the even larger number in Nova Scotia – there are an estimated 60,000 feral cats in Halifax alone.
Knight said that feral colonies are started when a domestic cat owner sets their pet free to fend for themselves. Cats reproduce so quickly that one domestic cat can lead to a full colony in less than a year.
“People have been irresponsible. We created the problem as human beings because cats are not wild animals they are domestic animals,” said Knight.
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In New Brunswick, Knight said that CARMA traps and spays or neuters about 2,500 feral cats every year as a means to control the population. But that just barely scratches the surface of the growing problem.
Kathy Prosser of Moncton has been fostering cats rescued by CARMA for the past three years and said she gets panicked calls from people across the region at this time of year.
“People will feed cats over the summer … and often they will call us when the weather gets colder, so we bring more cats and kittens into care this time of the year”
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Prosser believes the only way to get a handle on the cat problem is for people to see it as a human problem. She says they need to change their attitudes when they see a feral cat and “become equally alarmed by that as we do by a dog being a stray.”
She said the common notion that stray cats can simply fend for themselves is and absolute myth.
“They cannot. They become prey for other predators and they become sick and live a very miserable life,” said Prosser.
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