January 27, 2014

Dear Sir,

Times change and what we once took for granted fades to a memory. One of the great pleasures of my life was to sleep through the night and then wake to the sound of ground doves cooing. To watch big lizards scampering through the hedges and watch birds at our feeders and bath. To walk barefoot over my lawns and to tend my gardens and smell the flowers. All that has been lost. This change has not come gradually with the changes associated with life but with a rapidly ballooning population of feral cats.

Since the feeding station was opened at the old Hamiltonian Hotel site we have gradually but inexorably become overrun with feral cats. We the neighbours of this feeding station were never asked if we wanted it in our neighbourhood. The cats that were rangy are now looking fatter and healthier but no less ferocious when it comes to our birds and animals. The Bermuda Feline Assistance Bureau (BFAB) say it is the fault of owners discarding pets no longer wanted, okay, but by setting up feeding stations and making all feral cats healthy, the ones they have not caught in their traps and neutered or spayed are reproducing at an increasing rate.

Last night I had a tom howling all night long, it is mating season I’m told, and if it’s not that its toms fighting. The primary male is black and the vast majority of the feral cats around our property, around a dozen I can identify, are primarily black and white. There are probably more un-neutered and un-spayed feral cats now than before the feeding station was set up. Healthy feral cats still attack our birds and lizards and play with them to death often leaving them uneaten. Why should we be forced to accept this carnage?

There needs to be a solution found because I am so tired of my garden being used as a toilet and continually stinking of cat urine and faecal matter. It is not fair on those of us who do not have the fanatical passion of the BFAB members for these feral animals. It is not fair on families with young children who can no longer play on lawns. It is not fair on those whose sleep is disturbed.

The number of feral cats needs to be reduced to nothing. They need to be caught, neutered or spayed, then offered up for adoption. If adopted they need to be micro-chipped for identification. Those unsuitable for adoption should be humanely euthanised. If BFAB members want to take in those feral cats that are not adopted and keep them on their own properties then I’m fine with that too. Domestic cats move with their families all the time so the BFAB’s territorial argument is not fully sound.

Hoping for pleasures rediscovered