Question From Ikego Housing Detachment May 17th, 2011 Town Hall Minutes

Q: What can be done about the large number of stray animals?

A: Base security will deploy additional animal traps in support of this need.

Yeah that'll be the day. When they catch my cat, let me know. Oh and they should probably put the traps IN the housing areas, because the cats are living THERE not way far out in the woods like they think.

1. Tell people to stop feeding the damn things (note my wife is one of these damn people)
2. Have a patrol of volunteers go through housing and "collect" the ones they see.
3. Stop feeding the damn things!

Eh, I am one of the ones who likes the stray cats because they eat the centipedes in my backyard. I am talking the 10 inch centipedes who wear make up and heels.

From what I have been told they cant do much.I tried to push for a program like the ones they have in California.Where they will catch so many strays,vaccinate them and then spay or nuter them. Then they clip a notch in the ear so you know its an animal that has been serviced.

I find this would be a better solution that just trapping a bunch. They strays have been here and there for a while. They are kinda part of the ecosystem now. And as Julie points out they are eating bugs, rodents and even snakes. So what happends if you get rid of them all at once? You have a population explosion of somethings you might not want at all.So it would be more benifical to control the population and use it like a natural exterminator.It would just waste time and money to trap a bunch and then have to take care of a rodent and/or a bug problem you create by taking out the preditor. Tagging the ferals would also make it much more easy to determine if a particular cat was abadoned or lost by an owner ect.Which then you could use that to determine a pattern to see if you could stop the abandonment issue even just a little bit.It would also aid in the reuniting lost pets with owners.

But hey im talking crazy talk ,as I have been told it cant be done!

There are humane "cat traps" that are set up periodically to alleviate the stray cat population. Cats are then taken down to P.A.W.S. for rescue opportunities. This program isn't owned or operated by the OIC office, so we can't really comment too much beyond that.

How about if the people that don't want to incur the expense of shipping a pet when they PCS, stop acquiring them, and then ultimately releasing them outside when its time to PCS? This just makes the situation worse. Pets are NOT supposed to be disposable when you decide you don't want to be bothered with the "hassle" of taking them with you when you PCS.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...ostpopular

In addition to Security setting out traps, PAWS runs an active trap/neuter/release program where we set traps as well. The shelter did catch/neuter and notch ears of quite a few feral cats last year. We do not have any kittens yet this season so we can already see that the program works.

A few cats, specifically from Ikego housing area, have been trapped/neutered/released and their ears have been notched this year as well. There is only so much that PAWS can do- our organization runs solely on donations and by volunteers. The cats that have been done so far have come out of the shelter budget and the extra time and care for the feral cats were absorbed by those who run the shelter. Our goal is to get to all of the cats on Yokosuka/Ikego/Negishi but realistically that would take a very long time and a lot of money so we do what we can.