FARMINGDALE – Borough Councilwoman Patricia Linszky wants to work with the Monmouth County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MCSPCA) to inform residents about stray cats and feral cats in the area.
“We have a couple of feral cat colonies around here and one of them is maintained and one of them was off the cuff,” Linszky said.
Residents who live near the cat colonies have voiced concerns regarding health issues.
“People were complaining about fecal matter from the cats, but what they do not understand is that cats bury (their waste),” Linszky said. “Where these people live there is all woods around them and you have raccoons, deer, skunk, possums. So when they see (fecal matter) it is not from the cats.”
Linszky said she wants to bring in a representative from the MCSPCA to speak about the issue with residents at a Borough Council meeting in August.
“I want an education process for people who do not have cats who see them roaming around, they need to understand the process of feral cats,” she said. “We think it will be an educational process for people who just do not know.”
Ross Licitra, the MCSPCA’s executive director and chief of law enforcement, said, “A lot of these cats are feral, they are wild cats. Even though they are wild cats they are still, by law in New Jersey, considered domesticated animals and domesticated animals fall under a certain protection of the law.”
The MCSPCA has an animal control contract with Farmingdale. The two entities share the cost to trap, neuter, vaccinate and release a cat. The purpose of a trap-neuter-release program (TNR) is to keep cats from reproducing.
Licitra said TNR “has been used in many areas. The University of Miami did a great study many years ago and it shows that trapping, neutering and releasing cats back to the area they came from will drastically reduce the cat population, over a five- to six-year period, and eventually bring the population down to manageable numbers.”
Licitra said TNR works in most instances, but he said if uncertified caregivers continue to feed feral cat colonies that can adversely affect a TNR program.
There is a Back Yard Buddy program through which the MCSPCA partners with farm operators and gives away cats away for free after they have been neutered, vaccinated and implanted with a microchip. The cats live on the farm and catch vermin around the property.
“In my 30 years in law enforcement, when I became a cop in 1981, I would occasionally see a stray dog running around. When do you ever see a stray dog anymore? Never, because we have done an unbelievable job of promoting responsible dog ownership with spay and neuter programs and keeping that under control. Unfortunately, they forgot about the cats,” Licitra said.
Last year the MCSPCA took in more than 5,000 animals and saved 96 percent of them, according to Licitra. He said the organization limits the use of euthanasia to animals that are very ill or that display aggressive behavior.
