By: Blake Williams
If you have been around the Russell Union, Williams Center, or any of the buildings near Sweetheart Circle here in Georgia Southern’s campus, chances are that you’ve come across a few feral cats. These are not just your lovey-dovey cats, these will stare at you from afar, then run away if you get too close to them. While we see them wandering around in the bushes in trees, one must ask, what effects do they have on our campus?
“While most folks enjoy seeing the kitties around campus, make no mistake as they are incredibly efficient predators,” Dr. Alexander Collier said.
Not only wild cats, but house cats are guilty of being killing machines when it comes to rats, lizards and birds. This can be worrisome, as Georgia Southern has plenty of critters for the cats to prey on.
“We estimate that cats in the contiguous United States annually kill between 1.3 and 4.0 billion birds (median=2.4 billion) (Fig. 1a), with ∼69% of this mortality caused by un-owned cats,” according Nature.com. “The predation estimate for un-owned cats was higher primarily due to predation rates by this group averaging three times greater than rates for owned cats.”
After reading this, you start to think about how many animals are being killed by these cats we have here on campus.
Do we do anything to try to aid this? Obviously the answer isn’t to take the cats out. Students and staff on campus have been known to try and feed the cats. The problem with that could be if they find a place of constant food, they will stay and breed. As you can see in the picture provided, the cats on campus are breeding because that’s a photo of a mama cat and her kitties. How can we fix the issue? Georgia Southern student groups have been known to get the cats captured and put in a home, but that’s not always the case. If a cat is captured, the Humane Society of Statesboro and Bulloch County shoulder a spray and neuter cost.
“We have taken in cats that were trapped on campus if they were friendly and found them homes,” Carrie Mitchell with the Human Society said. “We have taken in others that were not friendly, but needed to be moved and we have found barn homes for those,”
There haven’t been any reports on any cats attacking students thus far on campus, but they have been known to lurk from the tree tops. In the other photo provided, you can see that the kittens are watching from a branch, and the mother is behind the bush staring students down as they walk by. If you ever get the chance, just stand outside of the Williams Center for more than 20 minutes and there is a high chance you will see one on the move.
