Animal rights activists yesterday urged the public to adopt cats instead of buying them and called on the government to neuter feral felines, instead of capturing and killing them.
Su Sheng-chieh (蘇聖傑), the site manager of Meet Pets, a Web site aimed at promoting animal adoption and other animal-rights related issues, said that the government's method of capturing stray animals had not been effective in cutting back on the number of strays.
Su made the remarks at the launch of a book on cats.
The Web site has recently been promoting the Feral Cats Trap-Neuter-Release or Return (TNR) program, a method used overseas to control stray cat populations.
According to the program, stray cats are trapped and then neutered at veterinary clinics, Su said.
The cats are then marked and released where they were found, Su said.
By only capturing and destroying cats, the government is not dealing with the root cause of the problem, because cats that elude catchers continue to breed, Su added.
According to figures provided at the event, more than 14,500 stray cats currently roam the streets of Taipei City. The number exceeds the estimated 14,000 stray dogs on the city's streets.
Su said the site conducted TNR experiments, starting in small boroughs in the city where kittens were often found.
Instead of trapping kittens, which was a tough task because they are small and hard to spot, they trapped and neutered adult cats, he said.
After a while, kittens were seen less often in the area, meaning that the cats had stopped reproducing, he added.
As to whether the cats that were released would cause further problems, Su said it would not be an issue.
"Ecologically speaking, there's a balance in nature. If no stray cats were around then people would have more mice and cockroach problems," Su said.
"Stray cats should be allowed to exist," he added.
Su said he hoped the government would consider TNR as a policy because capturing stray cats, putting them into shelters and then euthanizing them did not address the underlying issue.
He added that in big cities in Taiwan adopting cats was becoming more popular than adopting dogs, as dogs require more time and energy to train, while cats do not make as much noise and do not attack people.
Internationally, however, the TNR program is still controversial.
A number of wildlife and bird advocacy organizations reportedly argued that TNR allows feral cats to prey on wildlife, which may threaten endangered species.
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