I remember when I was very young, whenever looking for one of my brothers about our large house and gardens, my mother would sometimes sing the song, “Way down yonder in the Pawpaw patch!”
It was such a silly song, and we would all laugh. Maybe that is why, in later years, my brother bought a real live pawpaw tree for our mom and planted it out behind the barn. Having never seen one, we wondered — what the heck is a pawpaw tree? We would soon find out.
Pawpaw trees are native to the eastern US. Eons ago, mammoths, mastodons and giant ground sloths loved to eat the fruit of these trees, including the largish black seeds, which they would poop out, thus propagating the plant. When those animals became extinct, it was humans who planted and tended the trees wherever they went.
Can you guess what is the largest fruit indigenous to the US? It is the pawpaw (Asimina triloba). Can you imagine a fruit with a custard-like, creamy texture that tastes like a combination of banana, mango and pineapple? It is the pawpaw. Eaten raw, made into ice cream or baked into desserts, it is a regional favorite. George Washington’s favorite dessert was said to be chilled pawpaw. Lewis and Clark utilized these on their journeys. Thomas Jefferson planted them on the grounds of his home. Pioneers and indigenous peoples used its very strong bark fibers to construct baskets. The seeds of these trees were once carried as charms, called “pocket pieces,” to bring good luck. These trees were once very highly valued.
Currently, there is great commercial interest in pawpaw fruit. It is a highly perishable fruit, however, which limits options for any shipping or marketing longer than a few days. The frozen fruit has made its way into the market, along with jams, jellies, beer and ice cream. Much study has been given to suitability among the highly variable cultivars for shipping and commercial processing. PomWonderful? How about PawpawWonderful?
Emerging pawpaw patch in my mother’s yard, summer of 2023.
Returning to my mother’s backyard tree. It took 5 or 6 years before we finally realized the impact of that singular tree planted behind the barn. She had pawpaw trees popping up everywhere, sprouting clones from their roots (rhizomes). Talk about a pawpaw patch! She did manage to get one or two of the fruits, but most were eagerly snapped up by birds, raccoons, foxes, deer, etc. as soon as they were ripe.
After watching the pawpaws overtake that entire part of the yard, the decision was made against having a grove of pawpaw trees for a yard. We cut down the tree. Years later, the shoots growing from the remaining roots — hundreds of them — still emerge every spring and continuing into summer.
Pawpaw trees are the sole source of food for those beautiful zebra swallowtail butterflies. The poisons in the pawpaw leaves endow their caterpillars, and the ensuing butterflies themselves, to escape being eaten by predators. Their flowers are of the stinky type… attracting, not bees and butterflies, but beetles and flies that are attracted to dead meat. Commercial growers hang chicken necks in the trees to attract those pollinators to the flowers.
Pawpaw flowers
You may be able to spot a pawpaw patch of your own on your next hike into the woods. The magnolia-shaped leaves turn a bright yellow in the fall. You might even be able to run across trees with ripened fruit in the late summer. Keep in mind that green fruit picked off of the tree will not ripen– you must be patient! Join in with the raccoons, possums, deer, squirrels, turkeys, etc. who are also watching for that perfect moment. You might get lucky.
Pawpaw saplings emerged from original stump, summer of 2023.
Contributor Burt Glover became an accidental naturalist during his earliest childhood days exploring the dirt roads, backyards, polo field and barns of the Magnolia-Knox-Mead neighborhood of 1950s Aiken. Birds are his first love, and he can identify an impressive range by song alone. He asserts that he is an observer, not an expert, on the topics of his writings, which range from birds, box turtles, frogs and foraging, to wasps, weeds, weather and beyond.
Of all the birds that regularly frequent my neighborhood, I would have to deem the Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) as the one with the most personality. Its scientific name derives from the Greek and Latin, translating to “crested, blue chattering bird.” Its common name comes from the perception that it is blue, and that its calls sound to some like, “Jay… jay. jay!” I can’t really say that the Blue Jay has a song. More likely, it is just noises. Gurgles, rattles, clicks, chucks, whirrs, ear-piercing calls… and imitations.
A few of the Jays in my neighborhood have become masters of imitating Red-Shouldered Hawk calls. Blue Jays in different areas are reported to mimic all varieties of hawks, some owls, eagles, kestrels and seagulls. For more than a hundred years, people have tried to decipher why Jays do these imitations. To date, nobody really knows. My take — they do it just because they can.
In reference to my earlier remark — the perception that Blue Jays are blue — they are not. The pigment in their feathers is melanin, just as in our skin. Melanin is brown, and if you hold a Blue Jay feather up to the light, it is brown. The blue color is caused by the scattering of light through modified cells on the surface of the feather barbs.
This is the reason that Bluebirds are not really blue, nor Blue Grosbeaks, nor Indigo Buntings, nor any other blue-colored bird. The “blue” colors change on each bird as light conditions change. This is also the reason that the sky appears to be blue, or that blue eyes are blue. It is all just an illusion. The black colors on Blue Jays are real, however. The black “collar” on their throats varies extensively on each bird, and those differences are most likely how Jays recognize one another.
You may have read of “anting” by Blue Jays. I remember seeing photos of Blue Jays, rubbing ants on their plumage. The ants squirt formic acid to defend themselves. People say, “Well, heck, the jays are using those ant secretions to get rid of their own parasites.” It doesn’t seem to be so. Formic acid is ineffective on parasites. Mostly, this behavior seems to be an effort to purge each ant of their nasty, bitter taste before being swallowed. Jays are, if nothing practical birds.
Blue Jays were mostly responsible, it is believed, for repopulating the barren northern climates with trees as the glaciers from the last Ice Age receded from the North American continent. Squirrels did help, burying their nuts near the base of the trees where they were gathered, but Blue Jays were, in my opinion, likely more instrumental.
Using their throat as a pouch, a Blue Jay can collect as many as six acorns. The seeds of Oaks, Pines, Beeches, Pecans, Chestnuts, and others are carried — sometimes up to five miles away — and buried in shallow holes in multiple locations. An article in Natural History magazine recounts the observation of fifty Jays spreading 150,000 acorns over a period of 28 days. The Jays and other animals recover many of these hidden seeds. The rest are potential trees.
I’ve been throwing the shells from my morning eggs out at the base of an oak tree in the yard since last winter. (It is recommended to first bake the shells at 250 degrees for 10 minutes). Birds rely on these as grit to grind up food in their gizzards and as a source of calcium for producing their own eggs. Egg shells are a much healthier alternative to eating leaded paint chips shed from neighborhood houses, a habit unfortunately practiced by some birds. The egg shells I cast out disappear at a surprising rate. The main culprit: Blue Jays. They carry them off and cache them in their own private larders.
Many people characterize Jaybirds as thieves, due to their habit of “lifting” things that maybe they shouldn’t. Yes, they do sometimes steal eggs or nestlings from the nests of other birds. Extensive studies have found that only 1% of blue jays indulge in this behavior. They will also carry off treasures that they find lying around — jewelry, coins, bits of foil and shiny whatnots from roadside trash. Many of these finds will be incorporated into their bulky stick nests. Jays are actually more helpful than hazardous to other birds, as they will relentlessly screech and mob after owls, hawks, cats and snakes that might threaten the neighborhood birds.
My father once wrote a story about Blue Jays and snakes, in which he painted an observation I’d never noticed. When Blue Jays see a snake in a tree, (likely on its way to visit a bird nest), they alert the rest of the bird kingdom. “Snake!” they cry as they mob the marauder. “Snake! Snake! Snake!”
This draws the other birds from all four corners who add their alarms to the chorus. If you go to the scene of the cries, you can usually spot the center of the fracas. Here is where you’ll likely find a lone Mockingbird, right there in striking distance of the snake, giving him a good scolding. For all the bravado of Blue Jays, they can’t hold a candle to the Mockingbird, whose pluck is as fearless as any hawk.
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Contributor Burt Glover became an accidental naturalist during his earliest childhood days exploring the dirt roads, backyards, polo field and barns of the Magnolia-Knox-Mead neighborhood of 1950s Aiken. Birds are his first love, and he can identify an impressive range by song alone. He asserts that he is an observer, not an expert, on the topics of his writings, which range from birds, box turtles, frogs and foraging, to wasps, weeds, weather and beyond.
Fireflies were such a magical part of my childhood. Rising from the ground on summer evenings, they seemed as constant a presence as the moon and stars. As with so many other things in my life, sometimes I sit with my coffee cup and wonder — where did they go?
Firefly Experience “Summer Night with Fireflies.” Video by Radim Schreiber. Music by Tico Lasola (Best viewed full screen)
There are 170+ species of fireflies, or lightning bugs, in North America. Fireflies are actually beetles, and they begin their lives as eggs (many of which glow) deposited on, or in the ground underneath leaf litter and around rotting wood . Upon hatching into larvae, (many of which also glow), they feed on slugs, snails, and worms, as well as other insects. Depending on the species, the larval stage lasts from several weeks up to two years. Finally, one day, when the warm summer days begin to permeate the land, they pupate for a week or two, then emerge as adults, residing among the leaf litter. When the sun goes down, the fireflies begin their ascent into the skies, en masse, flashing their cool green-yellow lights, looking to attract a special female firefly, so that the whole cycle might begin again. Adults live for up to a month, at most.
Some of my earliest memories involve collecting lightning bugs in old pickle jars with my brothers. The lightning bugs would arise by the thousands, it seems, from beneath the camellias and azaleas in our yard. We always anticipated the emergence of the lightning bugs in summer — a habit I continued when I relocated to Asheville. It was there that I moved into an old farmstead, complete with an old barn and chicken coop. The fireflies I encountered along a hedgerow beside an old field were unbelievable. After sunset, seemingly millions of them would rise up into the tall trees, blinking all the while. At some point, they seemed to become coordinated — not flashing all at once, but more like a neon sign, with the light traveling in jagged lines. How was that possible?
A few years later, I moved to a mountaintop cabin near Saluda, NC situated among a vast acreage of woods. Without a field and a hedgerow, come summertime, there was no awe-inspiring display of fireflies. I contented myself with looking out at the lights of Tryon, NC and beyond, to the lights of upper South Carolina.
One evening, I took a walk in the low-growing plants in the woods, and I discovered lights! Many of them — small, blue-white lights meandering around, a foot or so above the ground. They did not flash, but were lit continuously. I found myself imagining small woodland sprites, traveling through the woods carrying lanterns. It was only later that I discovered that these were some of the famous Blue Ghost fireflies, found only in areas near to Asheville. Legend has it that these are the ghosts of Confederate soldiers, wandering aimlessly.
I moved back to Aiken about twenty years ago and have since lived in two different houses — both in woodland settings, and the perfect habitat, I would have thought, for fireflies. Sitting on my porch one evening in the first house, I witnessed one firefly rising out of the leaves underneath the oak. And then there was another. And that was it. It was the same story in the second house I moved into some years later. I’ve seen remarkably few fireflies since my return to Aiken — the most being in the large yard at my mother’s house, a natural landscape situated on a few acres south of Aiken.
Firefly numbers are declining everywhere, it seems. While study is ongoing, this much is known: light pollution from cars, yards, houses and buildings is drowning out and disrupting the intricate ballet of signals that fireflies depend upon to communicate with one another and to ward off predators. Deforestation and extremes of weather and climate, including drought, also play a role. Chemical fertilizers, insecticides (including mosquito truck sprays and home floggers), herbicides, and other pesticides are outright killing fireflies, as well as their food sources. These chemicals also damage the delicate ground-litter habitat where so many invertebrates reside. Other culprits include the modern machinery of leaf blowers, lawn mowers, weed wackers; this, combined with the modern-day obsession with highly-manicured landscapes that produce close-cropped, leafless lawns, parks and greenspaces devoid of the habitat necessary to sustain the life cycle of the firefly eggs, larva and adults. It could be, too, that invasive species, such as fire ants, are playing a role.
As is the case with many human impacts on the natural world, there are things we can do on an individual level to make a difference. In the case of fireflies, we can look at the known causes of decline, which are, by no coincidence, the same causes for the decline in so many other species — including frogs, toads, birds, butterflies, and bees.
Can we reduce or eliminate unnecessary light pollution? Reduce or eliminate pesticides and other high-maintenance landscaping practices? Maybe incorporate some natural, less-kempt areas into our landscapes? I like to believe that there will always be fireflies rising into the air on summer evenings and, nearby, people, young and old, with eyes to see them.
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Contributor Burt Glover became an accidental naturalist during his earliest childhood days exploring the dirt roads, backyards, polo field and barns of the Magnolia-Knox-Mead neighborhood of 1950s Aiken. Birds are his first love, and he can identify an impressive range by song alone. He asserts that he is an observer, not an expert, on the topics of his writings, which range from birds, box turtles, frogs and foraging, to wasps, weeds, weather and beyond.
The topic of animal rescue is lined with good stories and bad — from ordinary people doing extraordinary deeds; to opportunists exploiting a lucrative, underground trade in animals; to organizations that alternately do and don’t address the complex problem of unwanted and homeless cats and dogs.
I could begin anywhere on this general topic but, because my most recent experience was with a stray cat, I will start there. And because we live in the county, I will begin on a short, but pastoral stretch of dirt road in Aiken county.
Where we live was considered countryside back in the 1970s when my Dad built our house. Development has since put hundreds more houses, condos and apartments in our vicinity, with the Aiken City Limit now just a stone’s throw from our front yard. Our backyard, on the other hand, is hemmed by a dirt road and, beyond that, fields and tracts of wooded acreage that will likely soon be paved with more houses, apartments, and condominiums.
For now, the dirt road has the look of countryside and serves as a magnet for pet owners seeking a stealth spot to dump their unwanted cats — their belief being, perhaps, that some kindly soul will take them in or, worst-case scenario, their cat will spend their days as a carefree wild cat, living off the fat of the land, what with all the songbirds, lizards, mice and crickets to eat.
Enter our property
My Dad’s guiding tenet when he built this small house — planting trees and gardens for self-sufficiency and adopting a simple, frugal lifestyle — was this: “To live simply so that others may simply live.” Toward this end, he also gave generously and selflessly to people and causes.
Over time, my father’s tenet has been consciously expanded to include the native wildlife around us that is being variously displaced, poisoned, and made homeless by development and other human incursions into their homes.
Toward this effort, we are mindful of providing healthy wildlife habitat and of keeping our yard free of pesticides and other chemicals that might find their way into the food chain and potentially sicken or kill the beetle, the bird, the mouse, the fox, the owl. Of course, we recognize that our several-acre lot is not an island.
Still, we have healthy populations of caterpillars, beetles, spiders, butterflies, frogs, toads, snakes, lizards, birds, squirrels, moles, voles, field mice, bunnies and more. In other words, a smorgasbord for a scared, hungry cat who has been dumped off by its owner.
To this ample food supply, add the shelter of the undersides of our outbuildings — a survivable habitat for an abandoned cat. We’ve seen a number of sad cases over the years, including mother cats with kittens who are living lives of quiet desperation. Over the 50 years on this property, we’ve taken a few strays to the shelter. As of 2016, this option ceased to exist, as the county shelter stopped accepting stray and feral cats. More on that in a moment.
Nine Lives
Most stray and feral cats that come to our property are only glimpsed. They pass quickly in the shadows, skirting from bush to bush, sometimes darting across the yard at twilight and daybreak. Close encounters are rare. Below are a few of the more memorable ones.
I
Our most recent experience, in September 2022, involved a mystery animal whose presence was detected by the odd growling sounds coming from under our barn. When we approached to get a closer listen and try to determine what the animal might be, a large orange tabby popped out and hurried toward us, loudly meowing as it gave chase. The cat was oblivious to efforts to shoo it away. Not knowing the cat’s rabies status, we were pretty unnerved. For the next hour, the cat yowled at us from outside the back porch door.
This was the day that I learned that Aiken does not have a clear-cut system for contacting authorities about a potentially rabid animal, especially outside of normal business hours — 9:00-5:00 Monday through Friday. .Should I find myself in this position again, I won’t spin my wheels for 15 minutes trying to call DHEC and Aiken County Animal Control. I’ll just call 911 dispatch for the Sheriff’s office to contact animal control.
Long story short, this cat was not rabid. Just the opposite. He was the sweetest, goofiest, most loving and lovable cat you can imagine. We only later learned that he is an Oriental cat, his wacky personality being characteristic for the breed. He was clean and seemed very healthy. Surely his owners were looking for him! We immediately posted ads, looking high and low for his owners. We received a lot of queries from owners of similar-looking cats, but none that matched his description. Meanwhile, he made himself right at home, lounging about the property. Whenever we went outside, he ran over and tackled us with loud meowing and demands for affection.
The future Rufus Von Pouncey
As we quickly learned, he was also an aggressive hunter and had a mind to catch our resident mockingbird. My daughter — patron saint of the hungry, the lost, and the unloved — came over and collected him, then spent 6 weeks getting him hundreds of dollars of veterinary care, including neutering. The lengthiness of the process was due to the long wait times for appointments caused by the ongoing shortage of veterinarians. She paid premium price at an upscale practice across the river to avoid the six-week wait to get the neutering done in Aiken.
Simultaneous to these efforts, my daughter composed and posted a lengthy and quite wonderful write-up at the only Adopt-A-Pet “Rehome” website to find just the right home for this unique cat. Not a single person responded.
Rufus Von Pouncey, as he is now known, has become a much-loved and integral part of their family, but also a stressor at times in a household that was already at pet-capacity and had zero interest last September in adopting a cat. Were he surrendered to the County shelter, he may or may not be euthanized. Returning him to our backyard to be a de facto TNR would be an act of cruelty and would likely be the death of our resident mockingbird and more That every cat abandoned could be recipient to the soft landing Mr. Von Pouncy found in my daughter’s home.
Cat-napping with his catnip kitty.
II, III, and IV
From 2013-2015, there was a spike in the cat population on the property. It seemed every time we looked out the window, we saw a cat. The most memorable, for a number of reasons, was a lilac point Siamese. She was quite lovely in 2013, the first year we saw her. We’d first assumed she belonged to a neighbor but soon realized she was on her own. We checked all the local lost-and-found resources, hoping to locate her owner. No luck.
This was the photo I posted online in 2013, hoping to find her owner.
She spent the summer living under our shed. She was skittish and utterly unapproachable. I borrowed a cage from Aiken County Animal Control, but the effort was a failure. We did manage to catch a possum at one point (yikes) and also attracted lots of fire ants with the bait, but not the lilac-point. After a week or so, animal control came and picked up the empty cage. As the summer wore on, she grew more bedraggled. I took photos of her from time to time and reposted to online lost and found sites. At some point, she seemingly disappeared.
A photo from later that same summer. The underside of the magnolia is a favored spot for young bunnies.
One morning the following spring (2014), while drinking my morning coffee, I heard a thump at the front door. I looked out, and there was the lilac-point with two beautiful tabby kittens, who were scampering and playing on the front porch. I’ve always had a special fondness for gray tabbies, and these were especially pretty and with long hair.
One of the lilac point’s two kittens, summer of 2014.
I so hoped they might find homes, so we bought 3 cages to catch them. The experience of the previous summer was repeated and, in fact, the family seemed to disappear shortly after we put the cages out.
I did see two of them walking across the yard one evening — the mother and one of her kittens. It was really a quite lovely scene — this white cat moving across the lawn in gray twilight, her kitten walking by her side. Whenever the kitten fell behind, the mother would slow her pace, pausing from time to time to lick the kitten’s face and urge it on. As a mother, myself, I felt a certain kinship with her.
V, VI, VII
The following May of 2015, I was going into the barn and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tiny scrap of a shadow moving under a nearby bush. This was my first notice of the lilac-point’s return. Thankfully, my daughter was over visiting. She was able to grab the little kitten, who initially tried to spit and protest, but was barely strong enough to hold her head up, much less put up a fight. My daughter hurried her to the vet.
The kitten was emaciated, dehydrated, totally infested with fleas, and had an infection in one eye. She also had feline leukemia. The vet kept her overnight.
The next morning— all cleaned up and feeling better after a night of veterinary care — the kitten was able to enjoy being held and swaddled by my granddaughter, with whom she began the process of bonding with humans.
While all this was going on, I set out three traps. Right away, I caught the mother. This turned out to be as terrifying an experience for us as it was for her. She screamed and threw herself against the sides of the cage, feces flying, as her two other kittens, whose silhouettes were visible under the shed, watched from a near distance. This was a Thursday afternoon.
As it turned out, animal control was not able to pick her up and wouldn’t be able to until the following Tuesday. The other kittens did not enter the other cages, and we ended up letting the mother go at daybreak the next day, so she could tend to kittens. The three of them disappeared that morning, and we never saw any of them again. I suspect that local coyotes, sometimes heard in the fields across the street (before the arrival of a new subdivision) may have lowered the population of cats in our yard that year.
The lone, captured kitten was nursed back to health by a kindly vet tech, and a home was found for her.
VIII
In the summer of 2022, a cardinal family decided to set up house in a little ivy trellis on our front porch. Inside their next were two eggs. One midnight, I heard a kerfuffle on the front porch and looked out to see that a huge, long-haired orange tabby had halfway pulled over the trellis. I chased the cat off and uprighted the trellis. The next day, I saw that the cardinals were back and the nest intact. I collected over 100 longleaf pine cones and spread them about the perimeter of the pot. Then I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. It took only a few nights for the cat to return and destroy the nest.
Other lives
I neglected to mention looking out the kitchen window one early morning in 2014, just in time to see the lilac point emerge from my Mother’s daylily bed. In her mouth was a large green lizard — the largest Carolina anole I’d ever seen.
The week before the killing of the anole, a mother cardinal and her nestlings in the camellia bush outside my mother’s window disappeared overnight. Poof! Just like that.
That same summer, over at my daughter’s house, both an indigo bunting and a blue grosbeak had been coming to the feeder. The well-fed neighbor’s cat was a recreational killer. Despite my daughter devising various devices and applying $40 worth of cat deterrents to protect the birds from the cat, one of the birds was killed.
Blue grosbeak on the left and, on the right, the remains of either the blue grosbeak of the indigo bunting. Neither was seen again.
In 2017, my brother had a hermit thrush that returned to his yard every year, its sweet song a treasured part of the spring landscape. That is, until the day he saw a cat running off with the bird in his mouth. It was a similar story that same summer with one of the bluebird parents raising young in my mother’s yard.
The Debate
The argument goes that there are enough baby bluebirds, cardinals, hummingbirds, lizards, tree frogs, butterflies, and bunnies to go around. As someone once said to me during a debate on the topic, “It’s called a food chain, dear.” The argument goes that dogs cannot survive in the wild, but cats can. The word “humane” is held aloft, as if anyone opposed to TNR is inhumane.
Merriam Webster defines the word, “humane” as “marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals.” The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “showing kindness, care, and sympathy towards others, especially those who are suffering.” By these definitions, I would say that TNR advocates and those opposed to TNR are a humane lot overall.
Upon closer examination of terms like “animals,” and “kindness” and “suffering,” certain questions arise such as, “Are other animals, besides cats, deserving of our humaneness?”
More to the point: Whose suffering are we concerned about? This is the question posed by some on the anti-TNR side of the debate, who argue that, by letting cats loose to kill the indigo bunting, the cardinal nestlings, the anoles, the swallowtail butterflies, we are in fact making the choice of who will live and who will die. If a bird is killed in the forest, and we don’t see it….?
Moreover, for the life of a feral cat, it’s not necessarily a question of life or death for that cat, but a question of a slow, suffering death vs. death by euthanasia.
My daughter and I, both cat lovers, have had our own missions, of sorts, over the years. In the 1980s, whenever I found a stray cat and/or litter, I took them for spaying/neutering and found them homes. At one point, we had a total of thirteen cats and kittens in the house, counting our two cats — a thankfully short-lived chaos.
In the early 2000s, my daughter would catch strays near her apartment in downtown Aiken for the trap, neuter and release program. More recently, she has handled the spaying/neutering on her own and found them homes, rather than releasing them into the wild. Before Von Pouncy, there was Inky the black cat, who took a few years to finally find a great home. Below are some of the pictures used in the long-term efforts to find Inky a home.
Two truths that TNR professionals and advocacy groups acknowledge, but don’t necessarily discuss in their promotions of TNR, are that, (1) it’s less expensive to do TNR than to euthanize, and (2) TNR cats survive an average of only two to three years in the wild.
Both of these points deserve deeper discussion, beginning with open acknowledgement of what survival looks like between the first day and the last of a cat’s existence in the wild. Turning a blind eye to this reality may ease the conscience of a humane observer, but it does nothing for the plight of a cat that has been introduced by humans into a habitat where she is assured of living a hardscrabble existence ruled by chronic starvation, parasites, sickness, human cruelty, and the treachery of cars and coyotes.
Here is a third truth that should be part of the discussion: cats don’t command the sort of prices in the rescue/adoption market that dogs command. Dogs sometimes fetch prices in the hundreds and even thousands of dollars, which has opened a black market in the rescue industry that is painful to read about. At what point does an industry that commodifies life cross the line from humaneness to … something else?
Going Forward
Wildlife faces enough hardship from deforestation, development, loss of habitat, vehicles, poisons and domesticated cats. Adding a “community” of an invasive species of diseased, flea-ridden, parasite-infested, chronically-starved cats to the mix places a cruel burden on an already struggling wildlife population. Feeding these cats is no insurance against their predation of native species.
Those among us who intentionally undertake the effort of providing healthy habitat for native species are disheartened to realize we’ve done little better than to lure these creatures to the feral cats’ smorgasbord.
Feral cats are furtive, circumspect. At best, we likely glimpse only a few that arrive to our property. Some are transients, some are more or less residents of the area. One day we’ll see a black cat slipping across the lawn from the direction of a flower bed. A week or two later, we’ll see a new cat slipping along the shadows in the hedgerow where the songbirds nest. We may look out one morning to see a familiar gray cat pooping in the vegetable garden. The next day, an orange tabby. A month may pass before we see the black cat again. They’re there.
As has happened more than once, I may look out the door and see a beautiful cat staring back at me from the porch. These are the cats I suspect have been dropped off to live the rest of their “happy” lives in the countryside. Whenever I can, I get photos, put them up online, and pull an area-wide search to see if anyone’s reported a missing cat. I’ve yet to find a single owner.
The story of the lilac-point has been repeated a number of time over the years. I’ve seen the slow motion death from parasites, disease, and the hardship of the elements. A cat’s fur grows dull and ratty, their bodies kinked and knotted, their faces swollen and scarred. Rather than slipping from bush to bush, they limp in pain. Just the other night, I heard a cat on the front porch yowling the characteristic call of the mating season. Seems awfully early this year. And so the cycle continues.
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Local services for feral and stray cats
First, some brief notes on terminology. A feral cat is a cat that has never been socialized with humans, or has become unsocialized. A stray cat is a cat that has been socialized with humans but is now homeless. A stray cat can become a feral cat. A surrendered cat is a pet that the owner turns over the the shelter. The information below was provided over the phone and in person by employees of the City and County facilities. This primarily addresses cats.
COUNTY RESIDENTS: According to the animal control officer who answered a call to our house, as well as staff spoken to on the phone, the Aiken County Animal Shelter does not accept stray or feral cats into the shelter. Period, full stop. They do, however, offer a free TNR (trap, neuter, and release/return) program for these cats. This service is for county residents and by appointment only. In other words, be sure to coordinate everything in advance with the shelter, as there are rules and limitations on (1) the number of TNR cats the shelter can accept per day, (2) the days and hours the shelter is open for intake of these cats, and (3) the assistance the county may or may not be able to offer, regarding transport, should you be unable to bring the cat to the shelter.
How does the process work? If, for instance, you have a stray or feral cat on your property, you will need to first catch or trap the cat (the county can provide traps). Next, you will need an appointment to deliver the cat. The Aiken County Animal Shelter accepts TNR cats on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, and by appointment only. Should you be unable to transport the cat, the county may or may not be able to help, and the days/hours for pick up are limited. Once the cat has been delivered to the shelter, it will be spayed or neutered for free. You are then to pick up the cat and release it where you found it. FOTAS, a privately run non-profit organization, partners with the county for the TNR prograam.
CITY RESIDENTS: For city residents, there is the Albright Center, which will accept stray and feral cats found within City limits. The City also has a TNR program. As with the county, you will want to coordinate these services in advance with the shelter, rather than just arriving with a cat.
Local services for surrendered cats
ADOPT-A-PET: An alternative to surrendering pets to a shelter is Adopt-A-Pet.com’s “Rehome” process, which offers a safe, no-cost way to rehome a pet without placing him or her in a shelter. If this option does not suit, the county and city offers services.
COUNTY RESIDENTS: Aiken County Animal Shelter will accept surrenders of pet cats (and dogs), with fees that can range from $15 for an adoptable pet to $50 for pets that have litters or are unadoptable or difficult-to-adopt, such as pets with special needs, behavioral issues, advanced age, etc. There is a possibility, not a certainty, that a surrendered cat will be euthanized. FOTAS partners with the County to provide an adoption services for surrendered cats.
CITY RESIDENTS: Surrendered cats are accepted on a limited basis as funding and space allow.
Financial Assistance for Spaying/Neutering
The county offers a voucher program to help lower income pet owners with the costs for spaying or neutering.
Lastly this
Someone reading this article may wonder, “Why don’t she get the feral and stray cats in her yard into the County’s TNR program? At least, that way, the cats wouldn’t keep breeding.” It’s because I no longer have the energy and good health to engage the level of hands-on humaneness I enjoyed in my younger years. It’s that simple.
Rufus Von Pouncey, the quintessential fat cat, has grown to be a huge cat with a huge appetite.
Editor’s note: Earlier this month, the New York Times ran an article titled, “How to Clear 500,000 Feral Cats From New York Streets” — a boldly worded challenge whose solution was not forthcoming. This brought to mind two pieces on the subject that were written for the Aiken Chronicles in March 2023. Both were shelved, due in part to the divisive nature of the topic, but primarily because the information received on local policy with feral cats and strays in Aiken County was so inconsistent as to be impossible to state with any certainty.. This is not to criticize or lay any fault whatsoever on the many caring, dedicated and hardworking people who give generously and tirelessly of their time, energies and financing to help stray and feral cats in Aiken; it’s just to state a matter of fact. In the interest of opening the conversation and bringing facts to the surface, both pieces will be published this week. Any and all corrections of fact are encouraged and welcomed.
Recently, I visited my brother in the upstate. Over coffee on the porch one morning, I noticed he had feral cats living under his back building. “Yeah,” I told him. “I have some cats living under the outbuilding in my own back yard.” After a moment’s thought, I added, “Come to think of it, so does Mom.”
This led me to give further thought to feral populations of domestic cats. Researching this subject has been saddening. I’ve owned multiple cats most of my life. When I see a feral cat, I see a cat that, under different circumstances, could have been one of my beloved pets. From a distance, I can wax idealistic on the feral cat under my brother’s shed. Taking a closer look at the situation, other realities settle in.
First, What is a Feral Cat?
When unneutered/unspayed house cats and/or their kittens are abandoned by their owners or wander off, they become strays. When these strays get together, they produce kittens. If kittens are not socialized to humans before the age of 4 months they become wild — known as feral cats. Once that four month deadline is passed, the ability to socialize them to become pets all but disappears. Former house cats can also revert to feral behaviors after a time in the wild. Although they are not native to the US, large populations of feral cats exist in all 50 states.
The Numbers
Estimates on feral cat populations in the US vary, ranging from 30-100 million and up, with general agreement centering around 70 million feral cats. With unneutered cats capable of breeding 2 to 3 times per year, one pair of cats (such as those living in my backyard) can exponentially produce 420,000 offspring in as little as seven years. Even if that number is cut in half, one must wonder why we aren’t being overrun with these felines. I did some research and learned that, sadly, it’s because they die.
Short Lives
To become an adult, a feral cat needs to survive kittenhood– and only 1 in 5 survives to five months of age. An unhealthy mother is less able to feed her kittens, causing malnourishment. The intestinal worms and parasites passed to the kittens cause further weakening; fleas and lice continue this process. Diarrhea caused by worms creates severe intestinal problems. Viruses passed on by the mother include feline AIDS, leukemia and chlamydophila. The latter is a bacterial infection that causes respiratory infections, crusts their noses shut, and causes conjunctivitis that can rupture the eyeballs and cause blindness. In addition to all of the above, dogs, foxes, coyotes and snakes take their toll on feral cats, as well as cars, angry humans, other cats and starvation. Life for a kitten is difficult.
Feral cats that survive the perils of kittenhood grow into adults who will continue to suffer the same threats and ills — most of which would be easily avoided or treated in a house cat. Crawling around in dumpsters and battling with predators, prey, and other cats inflicts injuries that can abscess and kill. Respiratory and intestinal blockage occur from swallowing bones or foreign objects. Ear mites cause intense relentless itching, scratching and pain. Add to this: urinary tract infections, dental infections, tetanus, distemper, rabies…. Life for feral adults is also difficult.
Even with all these life-shortening hazards, the numbers of feral cats continue to increase.
Cat with clipped ear to denote its status as a neutered, TNR animal.
What’s To Be Done?
The ASPCA and many other organizations advocate the TNR (trap, neuter, return) program as the humane approach to curbing the overpopulation of feral cats. Supporting these efforts are many individuals and smaller, local organizations across the country that thoughtfully put food out for colonies of stray and feral cats. Some go to great lengths and expense to set up feeding stations at centralized locations. These efforts help keep cats alive, however they also draw other cats, including unneutered feral cats, to the colony. In addition to being more aggressive and likely to fight, these unneutered ferals breed and create even more cats.
I did a very unscientific calculation of the number of feral cats in Aiken County and came up with the number of around 30,500, which is likely an underestimate. Who will trap this number of cats for TNR? Who will neuter all these cats? Who will pay for it? Even if they could somehow be caught, neutering 70 of these cats per week in Aiken County alone would take eight years to accomplish. More on this topic in a moment.
The Wildlife Society, Audubon Society, American Bird Conservancy, and numerous other wildlife organizations oppose TNR programs as being both ineffective at reducing feral cats populations and for doing nothing to reduce the predation on wildlife. The Wildlife Society’s position paper on this states its opposition to “introduction or maintenance of invasive species and feral species that threaten the survival of indigenous species.” These organizations promote, among other measures, educating the public on the effects of free-ranging and feral cats on wildlife, as well as a call to keep cats indoors or, if outdoors, only in an enclosure or on a leash.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) asserts that it is cruel to neuter a cat, then release it back to dismal conditions where it will certainly live a short life of suffering. They state that cats are the number one threat to birds in the US, killing 2.4 billion of them annually, not to mention billions of snakes, lizards, bunnies, bats, chipmunks, squirrels, etc. PETA’s position is that it’s wrong to favor the lives of cats over the lives the multiple billions of other natural wildlife that they kill annually. PETA advocates expanding the capacity of shelters to accept all cats. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the difficulty of this approach.
Other Realities
Feral cats spread viruses, bacterial infections, internal parasites, fleas, ticks and fungal infections wherever they live — playgrounds, beaches, parks, gardens, barns, agricultural fields, city streets. This occurs mostly from contamination of soil with their poop. Transmission of their pathogens (especially hookworms, roundworms, ringworm, toxoplasmosis, salmonella and tetanus) to humans occurs through contact with the soil or eating improperly washed fruits and vegetables.
In the agricultural industry, parasites spread by feral cats form cysts in the muscles of cattle, hogs and sheep which can infect humans through eating undercooked meat. Rain also splashes the parasites and bacteria, including salmonella, onto agricultural crops, causing sickness and recalls. Water supplies are contaminated. Domestic animals (cats, dogs, horses, cattle, sheep, chickens, etc.) are all impacted by the pathogens spread by feral cats.
But the greatest death toll is to our native wildlife. Rabies, parasitic worms, distemper, and other pathogens take an additional toll that is not reflected in the numbers of wildlife that these cats kill outright annually.
Disappearing Vets
Regardless of our individual positions on TNR, the ability to provide this service is evaporating across the country. The numbers of veterinarians and vet techs in the US has dropped drastically in recent years, a trend that was only exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. Retirement, burn-out, suicide and low pay are but a few of the reasons. Meanwhile, cat ownership has increased 30% in the past two decades. Nowadays, an appointment for basic vet care may be weeks or even months away. Even emergency pet care can be difficult to access. In some areas, it is effectively unavailable.
An appointment for spay/neuter of an animal may take months. Spaying a female cat with a private vet can cost upward of $300-$500; neutering a male costs $150-$300. Bottom line — there are not enough vets to take care of the 58 million pet cats (not to mention the 78 million pet dogs). Who can we call on to provide needed medical service and spay/neuter for 70 million feral cats?
According to the ASPCA, 3.4 million cats are taken in by shelters each year, with 1.4 million of these cats euthanized. Shelter resources are taxed, between the higher demands and costs for services and the scarcity of vets. Increasingly, shelters are setting limits on accepting cats, with some no longer accepting feral cats at all. TNR slots are limited and quickly fill up. Some shelters no longer have the resources to provide TNR — nor even euthanasia for suffering feral cats. Some shelters have resorted, instead, to urging the public let these cats live out their “natural” lives in the wild.
