By MATT MILNER Courier staff writer
September 05, 2008 12:19 am
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OTTUMWA — Dogs, when turned loose, generally become scroungers, stomachs with a nose attached.
Cats, on the other hand, become hunters. If they don’t have food, they’ll find it and kill it.
That explains why Jeff Williams, Ottumwa’s animal control officer, wishes people would quit feeding stray cats. They’re getting the food people leave as well as the mice and birds they hunt. The result is a population boom for feral cats.
“We’re having a major, almost an explosion of the cat population in Ottumwa,” Williams said.
Things aren’t to the same point as they were in Randolph, Iowa, when the town made news earlier this year for offering a $5 bounty for every cat people brought in. Ottumwa has no such bounty, and Williams isn’t proposing one.
But he does want people to understand that if they’re feeding the cats that roam their neighborhood, they’re contributing to a problem. They also may be putting themselves at legal risk if the cats hurt someone.
Ottumwa’s animal ownership codes define an owner as someone who is responsible for an animal. That includes anyone who encourages or allows stray animals to remain on their property. In effect, feeding the stray cats makes you their legal owner.
“You’re taking ownership of these animals by allowing that,” Williams said.
For those who are not feeding the cats and want them off their property, Williams said there are limited solutions. You can’t shoot or poison the cats, but live traps are an option.
The traps aren’t perfect. And they can’t be set without permission from Williams. In practice, he’s not inclined to deny permission to use a trap on a person’s own property. But it still goes on a case-by-case basis.
And Williams has a handful of recommendations for those who want to use live traps. The first is to engrave your name or attach a durable card with a wire before using it.
Williams picks up five or six cat traps per week. If he has to collect two or three in a day, it’s easy to get the traps confused. Identifying yourself on the trap ensures that you get it back.
There’s another reason to have an ID on the trap. Some will be stolen by people who think it is cruel to trap a feral cat. That’s why Williams recommends setting the traps in a place where casual passers-by will not see them.
That’s also one of the reasons Williams wants people to set the traps at night and check them first thing in the morning. Doing that on weekdays ensures the cat stays in the trap a relatively short time. It is harder to get an officer to the property on weekends, and that can mean the cat stays in the trap longer than it or the property owner wishes.
Even Williams admits traps aren’t the best solution.
“That’s the quick solution,” he said. “It’s not really solving the problem.”
Williams adds that solving the problem requires that people take some responsibility — quit feeding stray cats, and make sure the cats you own are spayed or neutered. Remove the food and the cats will disperse. Spay or neuter the cat, and it can’t reproduce even if it gets loose.
It’s not fast, but if animal lovers do both, the cat population will come back under control, he said.
Matt Milner can be reached at (641) 683-5359 or via e-mail at mwmilner@mchsi.com
Licenses up, still under estimated number of dogs
OTTUMWA — The number of dog licenses issued this year is up over 2006, but it is still well under the estimated number of dogs in Ottumwa.
Officer Jeff Williams said the city has issued 1,900 licenses through August. That’s almost a 50 percent increase over the 1,032 licenses in all of 2007, and a whopping 375 percent increase over the fewer than 400 licenses in 2006.
Of course, Williams estimates there are something like 6,000 dogs in the city.
There is another positive sign for Williams. The dog licenses cost $2 at the beginning of the year. The price goes to $3 in July. Williams got calls in July and August from dog owners asking if they needed to renew their license.
They don’t — the licenses are good from January through December — but Williams is impressed that the owners were stepping up and asking instead of ignoring the license requirement.
And $3 is still a bargain compared to the $75 fine for not having a dog license.
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