Feral cat population dwindling
There are about 76 cats who live on campus, all with clipped left ears. These cats are called the Aggie Cats, and are cared for by volunteers and supported by donors on and off campus.
The Aggie Cats live in many areas on campus – a colony of four lives next to the Junction, and another lives by the Townhouses. Whit Milligan, director of resident housing, was one of the founding members of the Aggie Cat Services, which began as an organization dedicated to reducing the feral cat population on campus in 2004.
Milligan said before Aggie Cat Services organized, the Pre-Vet Club, headed by a professor in the veterinary science department who was a veterinarian, used the cats as an example to students of spaying and neutering procedures. However, the intent of the group was not the same.
“They didn’t go in with the intent to reduce the number of feral cats, which is what we do,” Milligan said. “So when that professor left, the program ended.”
The transition in purpose and organizations began at that crossroads in time, with one woman who Milligan said was passionate about the humane treatment of cats and connected a group of concerned campus residents to Utah No More Homeless Pets in Salt Lake City.
The Pre-Vet Club chose the name Aggie Cat Services, and the core group of five people received training on the Trap, Neuter, Release which is in place today.
Trap, Neuter, Release is a program employed by cities across the state, such as West Valley City, to decrease the population of feral cats in a humane and manageable way. According to the No More Homeless Pets website, one unspayed female cat can have about 3 litters of kittens a year. Each litter of kittens is from 4 to 6 kittens, who can breed within a year.
“The beautiful thing about TNR is that it’s costly and time-consuming on the front end, but as time goes on it all drops off,” Milligan said. “We haven’t had to do a trapping since May of 2011.”
Milligan said the Trap, Neuter, Release program stops the breeding and therefore slows the growth of feral cat populations. Before Aggie Cats, the fix to a call about a feral cat on campus was usually handled by USU Facilities or USU Police.
“Before, it was the police or facilities people who had to respond to calls, trap the cats and have them taken down to the Animal Control to have them put to sleep,” Milligan said. “So after the training, they said if it worked, they were on board.”
The group worked with wildlife officials, city council members from local communities such as North Logan, Providence and Smithfield, as well as Human Resources from USU in order to create their guidelines.
Since the founding of the group with the specific mission 8 years ago, the program has trapped and spayed or neutered 76 to 78 cats, vaccinated each cat and found homes in the community for a dozen kittens.
Milligan said she got involved with Aggie Cat Services in part because of her love of cats but also because of her job with Housing. Milligan, who owns four Aggie Cats, said she heard many of the complaint calls that came in from family and other housing on campus.
“I don’t think that just because a cat is unowned it should be killed,” Milligan said. “I wanted to help find a solution.”
Milligan said feral cats live mostly where people do because of ease of access to food and shelter. At USU, the Aggie Cats live mostly around the Junction because of the large dumpsters filled with food, and around Family Housing, which is near a field teeming with rodents, snakes, and other cat edibles.
Marcela Gardner, a business assistant with the Huntsman School of Business, said she got involved with the Aggie Cats after a friend told her about the program. Gardner said she is a volunteer who mostly feeds the cats on campus, filling water bowls and food bowls.
“I make sure there’s enough food and fresh water, especially in the winter,” Gardner said. “The kitties get really thirsty. I also keep an eye on the population and see if there are any newcomers and if they’re fixed.”
Gardner said she also goes each year to the animal blessings at the Saint Thomas Aquinas church in Cache Valley and educates the community about the Trap, Neuter, Release program and spaying and neutering cats in general. Gardner said education is one way to stop the problem.
“I think it’s important to educate people since this is an educational institution,” she said. “People come here with a cat or dog and then leave them when they can’t take the animal wherever they’re going, so educating the people about not getting a cat they can’t care for in the first place is important.”
MIlligan said the reason Aggie Cat Services uses Trap, Neuter, Release is because it is more effective than killing cats, and by educating the public the group has even raised support for the program from unlikely sources.
“A couple of our biggest and most loyal donors are cat haters because once you have face time with them and they realize Trap, Neuter, Release is more effective and how it all works, once they get that and see it will drop the numbers, they support it,” she said.
Milligan said the entire program is run by volunteers and money from community donors. The cats are fixed at Cache Meadows, where the doctors give them a discount on the services and vaccinate the cats before returning them to the trapping location.
Milligan said the cats are returned to where they live because it is easier to maintain a cat population in a place because cats are territorial. It is rare that a cat colony will allow new cats into the area.
O’Malley is one of the Aggie Cats on campus, and he lived near the now non-existent Agricultural Science Building. When the building was torn down, he relocated to the bushes between the Geology and Animal Science Buildings. Milligan said she received many calls asking if he was taken care of before she sent out a flier explaining the situation.
“He’s very friendly, would meow at people passing, and go up to them to be pet on the head, and everyone assumed he had to be someone’s pet,” Milligan said. “We had to let everyone know he was an Aggie Cat.”
O’Malley is so popular in the area, he has two Facebook pages. The first one, under O’Malley the Aggie Cat, has 43 likes. The other, under his newer nickname Moo Cat, has 140 friends.
Milligan said O’Malley hasn’t been seen in a while, and she’s a little worried about him. However, she said he might show up again when it gets colder.
– april.ashland@aggiemail.usu.edu