Livestock or pet defense: If an animal has attacked your livestock, poultry or pets, you have the right to defend your property and can legally kill the animal. When urban wildlife control or county animal control services are contacted to control a wildcat problem, it usually started as a cat that started feeding a person. If you continue to feed a cat, others will appear. Then the fighting begins to become a nightly event. Kittens begin to appear from animals that are not sterilized or neutered. Before you know it, there are no other animals on the site, except for a large colony of wild cats. Stray cats are domestic cats that have been separated from their owner. Feral cats are undomesticated cats that live in the wild. They were born in nature and never had a home. Their behavior is completely different from that of domestic cats.
They are considered wild animals. Feral cats are very autonomous and excellent hunters and can live well in the wild. Any person who unjustifiably survises, overheats, overloads, tortures or cruelly beats an animal, whether wild or tamed, and belongs to himself or to another animal, or who unjustifiably injuaches, maims, maims, kutilates or kills, deprives or neglects an animal of the necessary food, food or drink, or refuses to provide it with such food or drink; or causes, procures or permits an animal to be restrained, overloaded, tortured, cruelly beaten or unjustly injured, maimed, mutilated or killed, or deprived of necessary food or drink, or intentionally walking, inciting or promoting cruelty to an animal, or any other act; who tends to cause such cruelty is guilty of a Class A offence. This assumes that you know that the cat is wild, that you do not know who the owner is, or that conversations with the owner of the cat were unproductive. A civil conversation always resolves most conflicts, so try asking your neighbor to keep their kitten away from your lawn first. And if you feel like making the matter worse, you should talk to an experienced pet advocate beforehand. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws criminalizing animal cruelty and including animal cruelty crimes. Anti-cruelty laws must protect every cat, whether it`s a pet, stray dog, non-owner, or community cat (also known as a wildcat). Animal cruelty is a threat to the health and safety of all members of our communities.
Stray and wild cats leave feces and urine in areas where they live, make noise, fight, and steal pet food that is left outside. Stray and feral cats also loot unsecured garbage cans. Unvaccinated feral cats are a source of fatal, non-fatal diseases that can be transmitted to humans, domestic animals, and other wildlife. These diseases include rabies, plague, ringworm, toxoplasmosis, mumps, cat`s scratch fever, feline leukemia, and distemper. A person has the right to injure or kill an animal if he or she has reason to believe that such action is necessary to defend against an imminent threat of injury or harm to a person, other animal or property. Although each anti-cruelty law characterizes animal cruelty differently, the acts that are generally included are murder, injury, torture, neglect, overwork, and abandonment of an animal. For the purposes of this website, the term “free-ranging cats” refers to cats that spend all or part of their time outdoors where they may hunt wildlife. “Feral cats” are cats that are not and do not exist in the wild. Feral cats may be born in the wild or have recently entered the wild, but we are not trying to distinguish between these two groups here. Wild animals may exist completely in the wild without the help of humans, or they may be members of so-called “cat colonies” that are cared for and fed differently by human guardians. Do what you can to eliminate artificial food sources for free-ranging cats.
Bring pet food at night and secure garbage cans by tightly closing the lid or locking it into a container with an airtight lid. Predation of birds by cats is different from that of a native predator in the United States, perhaps more importantly because cats are kept in numbers well above the natural carrying capacity. Unlike native predators of similar size, cats usually kill their prey whether they consume them or not. Well-fed cats do not kill less, and equipping cats with collared bells or scratching them does not prevent them from killing birds and other wildlife. While native predators of similar size may take bird eggs or nestlings, no native mammal predators regularly hunt adult birds like cats do. Cats can be active day or night, so wildlife is exposed to feline predators at all times. Cats are less motivated than wild predators to hide from humans, so they often hunt in human-dominated environments where persistent wildlife is already grappling with multiple anthropogenic threats. Cat density can be so high in urban areas that it reduces bird productivity as low predation rates may simply reflect a small number of birds remaining.
