By John Howell, Publisher
Two recent news features should raise our new Laurel Street neighbors’ regard for the overabundant damncat population at our house. One is the report of a survey and rankings for U.S. cities whose residents said they had seen a rat in the last year. Not surprisingly, New Orleans topped the list.
The second story was a CNN feature about an explosion in Chicago’s rat population. There the Tree House Humane Society came up with a “Animals At Work” program that includes relocating feral cat colonies into rat-infested areas.
Relocating the colonies is difficult, but Tree House people acclimate the felines to their new surroundings gradually and feed them dependably. After about four weeks, according to the CNN report, the cats feel at home and can be released from “giant dog crates turned cushy ‘kitty apartments.’” By then then cats have become accustomed to each other and their surroundings and will stay as a colony as long somebody feeds them there.
Cats are the original rat predator, the CNN report continues. When cats are introduced to rat infested areas, the rats leave. One site is a brewery where rats the large grain supply attracted many rodents. A colony of cats eliminated the problem, the brewery owner said. A homeowner told CNN that he spent over $4,000 on rat poisons and exterminators before he called Tree House, which brought him a three-cat colony. Soon his rats were gone. And so on.
The CNN report also reminds us that rats are very effective at transporting disease:
“Rats are a highly capable sponge for disease,” Dr. Chelsea Himsworth, who helped conduct a study of rats in Vancouver, Canada, told CNN. “They can go into any environment, absorb all of what is dangerous and bring it back to the people.”
Meanwhile, the last rat I saw from our house was scrambling at twilight along a telephone wire down the street, much more clumsily than a squirrel.
That was about 10 years ago.