Wellington Limits Number Of Cats For Owners
KAKE:You might not notice the problem of stray cats just driving down the street, whether in Wellington or any other Kansas community, but those who deal with it say it’s there.
"We were picking up, compared to years past, a couple hundred cats per year,” said Wellington Police Chief Tracy Heath. “We're hoping that this new ordinance may lower that number."
This year alone through November, he says 231 cats were picked up in Wellington. So the city came up with changes to its animal ordinance, which includes a section saying “no person or household shall own or harbor more than four cats of more than six months of age or more than one litter of kittens."
You'll have to pry the cat out of my cold, dead hands. Or at least get the cat to let go of the couch cushions...
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I have three. All indoor cats. You can call me whatever you'd like. However, you seem terribly worried about birds. What do they call people who are obsessed by birds? 
Oh, and I have three bird feeders. Four if you count the two hummingbird feeders that I put out in warm weather. I call them cat theaters.
cat's rock!can't get at the birds.
I'm not crazy. Why does 2 cats make someone crazy but 2 dogs, 2 birds, 2 hamsters = sanity?
why are people who dress their dogs in costumes, paint their nails, bejewel them, carry them in bags, not considered "crazy"?
Somebody around here's a nut, anyway... 
Large sections of the city park are unusable because of the health concerns and the unsanitary conditions.
And it wasn't a problem until the recession hit and owners started dumping their cats off in the park.
My cat Westen ("My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy. Until..." was abandoned by his owners at two weeks old in a box in the gutter on the corner of my street (ironically in front of a church) in 95 degree heat. He was the only survivor out of the three in the box.
When I lived in the rural Mojave Desert, people used to dump their unwanted dogs. 
That meant one of 4 things:
1. Coyote bait.
2. Long, slow, painful dehydration death.
3. A feral dog pack: much worse than a pack of coyotes.
4. Someone (me) collecting them and sending them to the pound to be euthanized if I couldn't take them myself or rehome them.
We've all been worried about how the economic depression affects people; it's been bad.
It's worse for the pets. They need to be rounded up, re-homed, or, if they can't be re-homed, euthanized.
I'm not a fan of euthanizing animals. In the case of the dumped dogs, I thought it was the lesser evil compared to being ripped apart by a pack of coyotes or dying of dehydration. In the case of health/sanitation concerns, it's probably the lesser evil, as well. 
Ferals choose a location based on the exploitable natural resources, something that every species does, including birds and humans. If you remove the colony it creates something called a vacuum effect, and more ferals will move into the area because those exact same resources still exist. TNR works by stabilizing the colony at a manageable size. The cats defend their own territory and keep new ferals from moving in. The majority of feral prey is rodents, not birds.
In rural areas nature takes care of stabilizing the size of the colony. In urban areas, with fewer natural predators, neutering is necessary. Cats are attracted to human populations, because rodents are attracted to human populations. Humans are rodent magnets. As a species, we spill a lot of food. 
There is a difference between ferals and strays. You have to stop thinking of ferals as strays, they're not, they're wild. Strays can easily be re-homed and should be; the colony and the stray are both better off. There is a limited opportunity to socialize a feral kitten. A socialized feral kitten will grow up to be a domesticated cat.
A feral adult cat may learn to tolerate humans, but they will never be truly domesticated. Just like those idjits that keep chimpanzees and tigers in their apartments, someone keeping a feral cat should know that he could one day respond to a trigger that only he knows, and attack. Luckily he's small, so he probably won't kill anybody or rip someone's face off, like a tiger or a chimp, but still, don't ever think he's "tame."
I realize that it seems like euthanasia is the answer, but reality demonstrates that it doesn't work long term. Your concern for the birds is admirable. However, birds and cats have existed side by side for thousands of years and will continue to do so, without our interference. Unless of course we are interfering by creating artificial environments for the birds, with unnatural amounts of food and shelter. By luring them to places that they wouldn't normally be in great numbers, it throws off the balance of nature. People who do that, shouldn't then complain that the balance is off.
the strays.
the stray cat population! A lot of people may just dump their excess cats. I'm having a hard time seeing how this law will help at all.
The stray cat problems I witness have been from people moving away and leaving their cats behind. I also know a few places where cats are dumped. I took one in that had not become feral but there are so many more.
