Wild cat action urged to avert Irish cat-astrophe

By DAVID McKITTRICK


Ireland's population of wild cats is in danger of reaching astounding proportions, according to one of the country's main animal welfare groups, which is calling for immediate action to be taken.

The Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is warning that spiralling cat numbers may produce what can only be described as a catastrophe.

It has called a special public meeting later this month to tackle the problem. One estimate is that Dublin has up to a million feral cats, with another million elsewhere in the Irish Republic.

In many areas cat enthusiasts have kept up a tradition of leaving out food for homeless animals. At the same time, the country has no systematic programme of neutering, whereas in many other countries strays are trapped, neutered and released. As a result cat numbers have risen steadily.

They can breed with alarming rapidity, one expert saying that a single pair can produce more than 50 offspring in a year. Kittens can become pregnant at the age of three months.

According to Marie Healy, who runs the Marie Healy animal sanctuary in Donegal: "It's really a crucial situation. We've over a hundred cats here but you can't have this flood of them coming in - you'd have a deluge.

"There are already too many of them - they haven't been neutered constructively over the years. It's been kittens after kittens after kittens."

A petition launched by Mayo Cat Rescue says: "Kittens are being born daily and the uncontrolled breeding continues. Colonies of feral cats can be found right throughout Ireland in cities, towns and countryside, at factories, industrial estates, hospitals, hotels and farms."

The petition says many businesses and farms are happy to have feral cats around to keep down vermin, but when cat numbers get out of control some will resort to reducing the population though methods such as starvation, poisoning, shooting and drowning.

The DSPCA has now organised a meeting in Dublin for animal welfare groups and other interested parties. One traditional Irish greeting goes: "God save all here, except the cat."

This reflects the fact that the Irish have always been regarded as less keen than the English on cats, traditionally regarding the animals as associated with evil. This pattern is confirmed in Donegal where Mrs Healy, though obviously herself a keen cat-lover, admits that 80 per cent of her friends and workforce are English.

- INDEPENDENT