Purr-fect solution to cat problem

Date Published: 14-Jun-2012

By Dermot Keys

When Claudia Frank first rescued a cat in Galway it was to give it a better life as a part of her own family.

However, she would end up helping hundreds of cats through Galway Cat Rescue, the volunteer organisation she co-founded with Olivia O’Reilly in 2010. The registered charity works to help sick, abandoned and abused cats and improve the lives of feral cats in Galway.

“The idea was to take homeless cats, stray cats and feral cats in Galway and give them a chance of a better life,” Claudia explained.

Although originally from Germany, Claudia moved to Galway seven years ago with her husband. Claudia’s love of cats was shared by her daughter and she had promised to get her a kitten. When Claudia found a homeless kitten in need of help, she saw a way to save it and fulfil her promise.

“I thought ‘I promised my daughter a cat anyway, so why not this one.’ It was a small little kitten. I brought her home and she survived. She was lovely.”

The family subsequently adopted two more cats. After talking to other people who also took in or fed cats, it soon became apparent that the numbers of feral or homeless cats were increasing.

Claudia jokes that she didn’t want to be the “crazy cat lady” with a garden full of cats so she started doing research and came across the humane, non-lethal method of Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) to control the feral cat population. Initially, Claudia tried to fund the process herself.

“I said I can afford to do one a month if I paid for it out of my own pocket. That is what I did for a year, but that was not going to make a big impact.”

She subsequently met Olivia O’Reilly, who had also started to feed cats in her own garden and noticed the numbers growing.

The two women decided to help these feral cats and Galway Cat Rescue was formed. It has gone on to neuter over 500 cats, re-home over 300 abandoned cats, and care for many others.

Feral cats can breed exponentially, with female cats capable of having up to 80 kittens in a lifetime and kittens capable of breeding after five to six months. TNR represents the best way to address the feral cat overpopulation crisis in Galway.

“The idea is to trap the cats, get them neutered so they don’t reproduce, and return them to the location so the feral cat population is kept stable. They defend their territory so they don’t let other cats in.

“When you don’t return the cats, you open up a niche and other cats move in. They start breeding and within a year you have the problem all over again.”

With the feral cat population no longer mating in a territory, it eradicates many of their disruptive behavioural problems.

“You don’t have the breeding, the smell, or get the noise.”

Feral cats don’t fight as much when they are no longer mating so this reduces the noise. This helps to reduce the spread of diseases such as Feline Immondeficiency Virus (FIV) or “feline AIDS”, which Claudia notes is a big problem in parts of the city. The effective use of NTR leads to a healthier feral and domestic cat population.

“It is in the interest of cat owners that feral cats are all neutered.”

The group have recently noticed an increase in the amount of domestic cats being abandoned as the recession takes hold. Domestic cats cannot be released as they are unable to fend for themselves so new homes must be found.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.