Campus Cats

Today my phone rang. I didn't make it downstairs in time from my office, and an Ithacan rep left a message that my letter to the editor would be printed in The Ithacan tomorrow, Thursday.

A few weeks ago there was an Ithacan article about pets on campus (I would link it, but I can't find archives on The Ithacan page). The tone from interviews was that many students feel it's acceptable to have pets on campus. The next week the paper's editorial advised students to leave pets home. Thank you, Ithacan!

It is absolutely understandable for students to want pets, but there are so many pet hazards in student life. The first thing I did when I moved out age eighteen was adopt a kitten at the local SPCA. At the time I had a live-in job at a vet clinic. However when I went to college, Rastus entered the college shuffle. He got loose from two apartments when roommates left windows open, was evicted from a sublet where I had been originally told "pets aren't allowed but no one cares." I ended up keeping shades pulled and hiding him under the sink when anyone knocked on the door. He did a stint on campus, and was shoved in the bathroom for fire drills, with no consideration for what would happen if there were a real fire or Public Safety had to do apartment checks and he ran out the door.

The campus used to crawl with feral (wild) cats. They were everywhere when I was a student, 1982-1986, the offspring of lost student pets. When I worked for the SPCA after graduation, we received calls on them. And when I started to work for IC, they literally fell in my lap. It took about six years of really hard work, a lot of wonderful cooperation from Physical Plant and Public Safety, quite a bit of money, and probably gallons of KMR, but soon Ithaca College had zero cats, with new cats only showing up every now and then as they were lost or abandoned. They could be easily rescued, and the cost of rescue was low because there were now few of them.

Cats that might have been euthanized in early years when there were tons of cats, could get hundreds of dollars of vet care when there were only a few. Cricket, with a broken leg, had a $450 amputation and Ditz, the same year, was treated for a $500 fever and respiratory infection. Since thousands weren't being spent on kittens, more could be spent on the few cats that were rescued by students.

Leo (above, available for adoption!) is from a litter that was born in 2001 when a tiger cat near Physical Plant wasn't noticed until she had her kits. Whoopsie. This is how feral colonies get started. The kits were pretty large and wild before they were caught, which is why Leo has taken so long to turn into the big laid-back guy he is today.The younger kittens are when captured, the easier they are to tame.

With no cats on campus, it's easy to notice when new cats need rescue. There's a black-and-white cat now near the Towers.

But I'm no longer there to trudge through the snow looking for cat tracks. Someone---or several someones---needs to take over.

When I saw the article in The Ithacan I envisioned a campus crawling with cats again in five years if no one watched out for new cats. I would love to help, if others are interested. I'll happily shelter the feral cats the Tompkins County SPCA ("no-kill") cannot take, but someone needs to notice when they are there, and help feed them until they can be captured.

So I hope others are interested. I love I.C. and am very proud of what the College accomplished with these cats. I.C. should be proud of it too. But we need to make sure each new cat gets rescued immediately, or soon there will be kittens.

Kittens mean feral cats.

And feral cats mean a problem all over again, where there doesn't need to be one

Universities all over the U.S. are managing their feral cat population proactively. There is UTexas, and UNT, and Auburn as well as Stanford and Clemson, and even where they are removed from campuses they are not euthanized..

(A note on that last link. Feral cats are not a risk to humans if neutered and rabies vaccinated. Pettable cats are a risk to humans, which is why friendly cats and all kittens need to be removed, and any existing feral cats or local pets should be fixed. And unmanaged cat populations are a risk, because people try to "save" sick kittens are are bitten. But a fixed feral cat that zooms off anytime a human comes near is less risky than raccoons in a dumpster).

I.C. is in the enviable position of having only one or two cats on campus now. It would be wonderful to keep it that way.


Cricket was rescued by students in the Towers parking lot. After nursing her through her amputation for a broken leg, we fell for her charms and kept her. If we don't have more I.C. cats, it's because the program has been so successful. If no kittens are born, we have nothing to adopt!