There is a large problem that is occurring daily on the University ofWest Georgia campus. This problem has recently been brought up with the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and The Wild Things organization. Currently, the feral cats on campus raise risk for the well-being of students, staff and the campus environment.
UWG is taking action to deal with the problem of feral cats on campus. Many students have announced their concern because of the possible cat diseases some cats may carry. UWG has set a plan in action to lower the cat population and, in doing so, reducing the risk of the diseases possibly carried.
According to the ASPCA and the CDC, in the past 10 years, Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) is at an all-time high for the nation. Not only is there the issue of FIV, but feral cats can also carry rabies, toxoplasmosis, plague, parasites, feline leukemia virus plus a multitude of others.
“The rise in FIV and other diseases was the main reason that UWG amended its program to testing and immunizing the cats,” said Director of Risk Management/Environmental Health & Safety (RM/EHS) Matt Jordan. “Despite their cuteness, feral cats are wild animals. Their instinct is to fight viciously if they are cornered or if they feel threatened.”
Students have been trying to help with the cats for some time. However, one specific group has made an impact on the campus. The Pre-Vet society at UWG has tried to work with university officials to lower the population of the cats.
RM/EHS had to decline any lend of help from students due to liability, regulatory and operational issues.
“The university is reducing its feral cat population through sterilization,” said Jordan. “The most effective, and most humane, way to address the cat population is to prevent kittens from being added to the colonies. In the past few years, the university has reduced its cat population significantly through adoption, attrition and preventing offspring. There is also a Feral Cat Committee that is in development and will include the counsel of a local veterinarian.”
The university has practiced a Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) program for several years, but due to concern for transmitted diseases, the university has modified TNR to a Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Release (TNVR) program. The overarching goal is to humanely reduce the cat population.
“The TNVR program is not only humane, but it is simple,” said Jordan. “University employees and volunteers working for Risk Management periodically trap the cats, then take the cats to the spay/neuter clinic for testing, vaccinating and neutering, and finally return the cats to their colonies.”
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Thanks to Ineke Abunawass for years of unnoticed service helping the cats! It would make me happy to see students showing a little compassion for the hungry cats, and a bit less worry about diseases which they are VERY unlikely to catch from the cats!
Any establishment of “higher” education; whose administrators, faculty, science departments, and students are so uneducated and foolish as to allow and promote an infestation of invasive species predators; capable of transmitting 3dozen+ deadly zoonotic diseases to students and staff on their own campus; is most certainly worthy of being passed-up in order to find a place with people having education levels above that of 3rd-grade elementary-school or bible-home-schooling.
I’d never want to attend a campus like that. Give people like that MY money? You must be joking. Encouraging and assisting a man-made invasive species to destroy all our valuable native wildlife? This doesn’t say much for the intellect that is in charge of and roaming any halls that would allow that. A clearly visible alert in the sub-standard IQ levels permeating all levels of an institution allowing it.
Unless, of course, this is like where some institutions keep TNR (trap, neuter, re-abandon) cats as a ready supply of dissection specimens for biology finals and for other experiments. Then the TNR “death by attrition” excuse does come in handy to cut costs on some campuses. “They died of ‘TNR attrition’,” makes it so easy to explain-away why so many disappeared and nobody can find the carcasses. It seems to be a popular trend of cost-cutting on some campuses of late. The TNR proponents never the wiser (for that, is clearly impossible).
See if your “schoolin'” can “figger” this one out:
Here’s how you can make any cat-licking, facts-twisting, propaganda-spewing fool reveal just how absurd, hypocritical, ignorant, stupid, and ludicrous ALL their beliefs are; all with just ONE simple question. Ask them:
“If you believe that these man-made (through selective-breeding), environment destroying, deadly-disease infested, pestilent, invasive-species vermin cats are a natural part of the environment and belong out in nature; then why are you even bothering to sterilize them?”
Blatantly ignorant hypocrite much?
Your agreement to sterilize your domesticated cats is your very agreement that they don’t even belong there in the very first place. Is this too difficult for you to comprehend? Is your 3rd-grade bible-home-schooling, replete with your bambi-cartoon-sing-along curricula, now failing you? Must be.