is one of the world's leading teaching and research hospitals for wildlife and conservation medicine, providing state-of-the-art veterinary care for more than 3000 wild animals each year.

The Center of draws on lessons learned from each patient admitted to teach the world to care about and care for wildlife and the environment.

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(water flowing gently) (bright upbeat music) >>Have you ever been asked, are you a dog person or a cat person?

Well, for most folks it only takes them a single breath to answer that, but some of us are both.

I personally have five dogs and one ancient cat, Panzer.

He's 19 years old and he's still going strong.

Main reason he got to be so old is that Panzer, is an indoor cat.

For the last almost 30 years, that's been the rule at my house.

Back in 1992, here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, a hospital for native wildlife, one of our former summer interns was in graduate school.

He chose to use our patient records to contribute to his thesis for his master's degree.

He took our patient data, put it into an epidemiological database that had been created by the Centers for Disease Control, and he printed out an epidemiological report on what was happening to our patients, and what their survival rates were.

And boy were we shocked.

At that time, we found that nearly 15% of the patients coming into the Wildlife Center of Virginia, were either confirmed, or suspected victims of domestic cats.

And the survival rate among that high number of patients was very, very low.

From the day I got that report, every single one of my cats has been raised and maintained happily and for a long lives as a strictly indoor cat.

(bright upbeat music) When the subject of outdoor cats comes up, the conversation can be very contentious, and very controversial.

Often marked by a lot of hand waving, and screaming and name-calling.

And that's really too bad because the issue of outdoor cats is a serious one across the United States, and in many other around the world.

Now, there are some outdoor cat advocates and defenders who think cats belong outdoors and are happy out there, and it's just fine to release them to the wild.

Sometimes even after they've been trapped, or brought to a shelter for care, they simply neuter to them, give them a vaccination and turn them loose, and feel good about having done so.

There's an entirely separate group of very passionate cat advocates that believe that returning any cat to the outdoors, freeing it or releasing it to the wild, is actually an act of cruelty and abandonment.

No matter what your motives are.

They believe that cats belong indoors, and should be kept in control of an owner, or a cat advocacy organization.

Well, that's certainly not an easy one to solve because both groups feel that they're right, and both groups are often inflexible in discussing the issue.

Now, the one thing that we can say is that there's not much good science to back up the claims of some of the groups that advocate a practice called trap-neuter-return, or TNR.

They will go out and trap cats in the outdoors, bring them into captivity, neuter them, or spay them, sometimes give them vaccinations, and then simply turn them loose again.

They say that is the absolute answer to the outdoor cat population control.

Problem is, there's just no good science behind that.

For those of us who have a very strong interest in wildlife, and who entered this discussion, we are all of one mind, outdoor cats take a terrible, and devastating toll on wildlife.

The Smithsonian Institution, and the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service recently conducted a research project in which they tried to determine how many outdoor cats are there?

And just how big is that impact?

What they found is there an estimated 164 million outdoor cats.

Now, little less than half of those are truly feral cats, cats that are not owned by anybody, ones that are probably not socialized.

Maybe they were born in the wild, and will spend their whole short lives in the wild.

But the other half, about 84 million cats are indeed owned pets.

And unfortunately, many of those are allowed to simply roam freely outdoors, either all of the time or part of the time, and they too have an impact.

A lot of people want to say that the cat is for all intents and purposes, a wild animal when it's outdoors.

But that is not true.

Cats are not wildlife.

Yes, killing for them is instinctive, but they don't perform in the environment as a natural predator.

They don't control their population based on the prey base, because the cat doesn't have a specific prey base like natural predators do.

For foxes, as an example, if the rabbit population goes down, the population of foxes go down.

Not so for the cat, they kill indiscriminately.

They'll kill anything that moves.

Not because they're hungry necessarily, but because they're cats.

Cats in the wild are killing machines.

(bright upbeat music) >>We receive multiple phone calls a day from the public regarding wildlife caught by cats.

Most of these calls are people confirming that they don't need to bring the animal in because they don't see any obvious signs of injuries.

This is wrong.

We always want the animal to come in, even if it's not a confirmed cat attack.

It's better to be safe than sorry.

Most cat attacks happen in the spring and summer.

In 2019, 90% of our confirmed cat attack patients were admitted between April and September.

This is because teenager wildlife haven't learned how to be wild yet.

They haven't learned that a cat is a predator, or they can't get away fast enough.

At the Wildlife Center Virginia, the most commonly admitted patient due to cat attacks is the eastern cottontail.

This is due to their life history.

They nest in shallow divots in the ground, which are easily accessible to cats.

Even as juveniles before they learn to run from predators, they freeze up.

In 2019, the Wildlife Center of Virginia admitted 32 different species of songbirds due to confirmed cat attacks.

Most people assume cats only attack rodents, but in reality, there are many potential victims of cat attacks.

It's frustrating to receive calls from the public regarding the wildlife that had been caught by cats because most of the time, they don't think the animal needs to come in.

When cats bite an animal, they leave very small puncture wounds under the fur or skin that most people can't see.

These puncture wounds are caused by teeth that act like hypodermic needles that insert bacteria into the animal.

Without antibiotics this bacteria can be deadly.

Most people also assume these animals aren't in pain.

We're used to seeing people in pain through their facial expressions or the making noise.

Prey species will freeze up, and they won't make any noise when they're in pain.

And so, when someone rescues an animal after they're caught by a cat, they assume they're fine.

When someone brings in an animal that their cat has attacked, I do always try and start a conversation about keeping their cat indoors.

Most of the time, people aren't receptive.

It's a very heated topic.

They'll say something like, oh, this is the first animal my cat has brought home.

She's not a killer.

But in reality, cats leave most of the animals that they capture at the kill site.

So you never know the damage that they're doing to the environment.

(bright upbeat music) >>Here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, we did an 11-year retrospective study of just our patients to see whether the narrative was true.

Do cats only kill mice and rats, or injured animals or ones that are sick?

Well, the answer was pretty compelling.

Between 2000 and 2010, we had admitted about 21,000 patients here to the Wildlife Center of Virginia.

What we found is that cat attack was the second leading cause of injury to the mammals admitted to the Wildlife Center.

It was the fourth leading cause of injury to all of the birds admitted here.

The more disturbing result was that of all the mammals that had been attacked by a cat, and these are confirmed attacks.

These are ones in which somebody saw the cat with the animal, the mortality was over 70%.

For birds, it was even worse.

If a cat touched a bird with tooth or claw, there was an 81% chance that bird was going to die, even in a state-of-the-art professionally staffed wildlife hospital.

So if you rescue a bird or a small mammal from your cat, and set it free and think I've saved its life, you need to think again.

That animal may have run away or flown away, but if the skin is broken, it's almost guaranteed that animal is going to die.

Now, what about the narrative that, oh, my cat doesn't hunt.

I never see it kill anything.

The University of Georgia, developed a fascinating research project in cooperation with the National Geographic Society.

They called it Kitty Camp.

As the name suggests it involved placing tiny digital cameras on collars around the necks of cats.

Now, these weren't feral cats, these were owned cats, pet cats, that were simply allowed to live outdoors part of the time.

Each one of those tiny cameras would document the travels of the cat, the activity of the cat, its interaction with other cats.

But most importantly, it recorded it every time a cat would kill a wild animal, not only what it was, but what happened to it.

What they found is that in 77% of the cases, the animal was either eaten on the spot completely, or left where it was killed, and the cat would simply walk away.

It's no wonder the owners don't know, or don't believe that their cat harms wildlife (bright upbeat music) Wildlife is admitted to the Wildlife Center of Virginia almost daily that has been caught by free roaming outdoor cats.

The state of these animals when they come in is pretty variable.

However, the unifying theme kind of with these patients is a traumatic injury.

So, the main things I think of would be fractures, broken bones, lacerations, or degloving, so wounds to the skin.

Punctures are really common as well.

So cats have sharp little teeth that can penetrate deeply into the muscle and skin of these patients.

And the worst one we probably see would be considered herniation.

What that is, is whenever the cat catches the animal, it makes a traumatic injury to the body wall, a hole in the body wall, basically.

And what can happen in that case is the insides of the animal can come to the outside.

Which is often life-ending for those species.

A cat's mouth is full of bacteria.

And any time that mouth comes in contact with another animal, the bacteria in that cat's mouth is able to be transferred onto that patient, whether that be into a wound or even into their bloodstream.

When those bacteria are able to go into a wound, and into the bloodstream, they're able to cause really severe infections, either locally at the site of that wound, or systemically in the bloodstream throughout the animal's whole body.

The prognosis for cat attack victims is unfortunately not great.

Most of the cat attack victims honestly die.

I would say 20 to 30% of cat attack victims, make it through the Wildlife Center and return to the wild.

Meaning 70 to 80% of those patients are euthanized or die while they're here.

As a wildlife veterinarian, the amount of suffering I see daily caused by free roaming outdoor cats to wildlife, is immense.

These injuries are generally quite preventable if someone could have just kept their cat indoors.

And then as a cat veterinarian, which I was previous to my time at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, I think it's really important that we prevent cats from going outside in order to keep them safe.

A lot of the injuries we see when cats go outdoors, such as broken legs, cat bite abscesses, as well as viral diseases, could have been simply prevented by just keeping your cat indoors.

Lastly, as a cat owner myself, I feel it's really, really important to keep my cat indoors, to protect her, to prevent her from suffering any sort of injury or illness that she could have occurred by going outside.

My cat is called Charlotte Amelia.

I've had her just about three years now.

She was initially a barn cat, that was just born in a barn outside.

So whenever we adopted her, we made the decision to make her exclusively an indoor cat.

And she's been really, really happy indoors since we made that decision.

As far as the indoor versus outdoor cat debate goes, generally it's recommended to keep cats indoors.

Not every one of course follows that, but the American Veterinary Medical Association recommends really strongly of advising clients of the benefits of having an indoor only cat.

Outdoor cats face a ton of risks every day when they're outside.

So things like being hit by cars, having fights with other cats, being captured by predators, such as eagles or hawks, catching diseases from other cats, as well as things like bringing parasites into your home when they come back home at the end of the day.

So, fleas, ticks, all those things they could be encountering out there in the environment, then they're bringing into your house at the end of the day.

So overall it's going to be extremely beneficial for your cat to stay indoors where they're safe, and you know where they are, and you can keep an eye on them.

And also it's gonna greatly benefit your local wildlife.

(bright upbeat music) >>Well, I serve as the State Public Health Veterinarian with the Virginia Department of Health, and a big part of my job is educating people about, and monitoring for zoonotic diseases.

Zoonotic diseases are the infectious diseases that both people and animal can become infected with.

And it's estimated that they make up about six out of every 10 infectious diseases.

Well, cats are very popular pets, and they can make great companion animals.

It's important to remember though, that cats that roam freely outdoors are more likely to become infected with a zoonotic disease, which in some cases can harm them, and then can also make them a source of infection for people and other animals.

Two examples of zoonotic diseases that cats can carry include rabies and Toxoplasma.

Toxoplasma, is a parasite that can be found throughout the United States, and can actually infect many species of warm blooded animals, including people.

Cats are really important to the life cycle of Toxoplasma.

And one cat, if infected can shed millions of Toxoplasma eggs into the environment, and these eggs can last in the environment for months and even years.

For the most part, cats remain well.

Although some cats, particularly kittens can become ill if exposed to Toxoplasma.

People can be exposed to Toxoplasma eggs in a number of different ways, including consuming food or water contaminated with Toxoplasma eggs, consuming undercooked meat contaminated with Toxoplasma, and also transmission from mother to child during pregnancy.

A pregnant woman, particularly if she's exposed to Toxoplasma eggs for the first time while pregnant, may have complications with her pregnancy that could result in a miscarriage, or could result in a child that develops vision impairment, or developmental delays.

The best ways to avoid exposure to Toxoplasma eggs includes practices like cooking meat thoroughly, avoiding drinking untreated water, and always practicing good hand hygiene such as, wearing gloves and washing your hands well after contact with soil.

People who have weakened immune systems, or those who are pregnant, should keep their cats indoors, or avoid adopting a new cat while pregnant or immunocompromised.

Rabies is a virus that's commonly found in Virginia's wildlife, particularly certain wild animals like raccoons, skunks, and foxes.

Cats are the domestic animals that are most commonly diagnosed with rabies in Virginia, and in the United States.

In Virginia, we diagnose approximately 30 cats per year with rabies.

And most of those cats are described as stray or feral.

Because people have more contact with domestic animals than they typically do with wild animals, when domestic animals are diagnosed with rabies, it often has a much greater human health impact.

Keeping our cats rabies vaccination status up to date, is a great way to ensure not only that that cat will be protected, but that that cat will not be a source of rabies exposure to other animals or people.

Ultimately, managing free-roaming cat populations should be done in a way that promotes animal welfare, public health, and environmental stewardship.

With the goal of having all cats under responsible ownership.

(bright upbeat music) >>If you have an outdoor cat, it's important to teach them to learn to come indoors, and keep them indoors.

It's not only safe for the wildlife around them, but it's safe for them.

It's the best thing for them.

There's so many dangers out there for them.

So we wanna get them indoors.

So the best way to do that, is a slow introduction to a house, some food, some warm bed, slowly bringing them inside, get your house prepared for them to come in doors so that they see that this is a great place set up for them.

You don't wanna push them too fast to have the whole entire house to themselves.

If you have other animals in the household, you want the introductions to go very slowly.

I like to recommend even putting a screen door up on bedroom where you're keeping the new cat coming in.

So they can meet nose to nose through the screen, and getting used to each other's smell before they're actually in each other's territory.

Or if that's not possible, having a cat condo, that's a wire cage that you can put one of the cats in so that they can meet through a cage.

Someplace that it's safe for them to meet each other.

That's very important so that they feel safe in their new environment.

You also want to try to build something like a cattery outside, where you can put, bring the cat so they can still have some fresh air, and some interaction with what they're used to in being outdoors, but they're doing it now in a safe way.

So if you've got a porch that you can screen in for the cat, or if not build something outside, that'd be great.

We wanna everything that a cat would normally find outside.

I'm not saying, turn your house into a jungle or a forest, but you definitely want to make the area that they're going to be in very suitable for their needs.

So you need to have a cat box.

You need to have several cat boxes.

Some people will put a cat box way down in a basement, and expect the cat to go all the way down there to find it.

Now, if you have to go to the bathroom, you don't wanna have to run all the way down to the basement to find the bathroom.

You want it to be convenient.

So put cat boxes around in convenient areas for your cat.

Do different cat boxes, some with lids, some without lids, try different kitty litter, try a variety of things so that you find out what your cat likes best.

You can put little plastic shields on corners of furniture to make sure that your cat doesn't use that as a kinda scratching post and put scratching posts in various places around your house, as you start to open the house up to them.

So that they have appropriate places to use for scratching.

Scratching and improper elimination are the two things I hear the most about from people when they try to bring their cats indoors that tend to make somebody open the door and say, bye-bye kitty.

So we wanna try to eliminate those things from happening right from the get-go.

Setting yourself up for success, and setting the cat up for success is what's really important.

And if you do start to have problems, when you bring the cat indoors, evaluate what you've done and take a step back.

There's nothing wrong with taking a step backwards, and starting over again.

If you've expanded the cat's territory, and you start having problems, go back to where you weren't having problems, and maybe putting the cat back in the bedroom for a while, maybe separating them from other animals for awhile.

It's okay to take a step backwards.

Take a breath and try again.

Sometimes it just takes some cats a little longer to adapt to the indoor living than it will other cats.

So you just don't wanna rush it.

Your timetable might be different than the cat's timetable.

Be patient and be strong, because you're gonna have some cats who are gonna be very vocal.

They're gonna go to the door, and they're gonna, meow!

Meow!

And make a lot of noise.

You just need to ignore it, you need to be strong, close the door to the laundry room, or wherever it is that they're vocalizing, and put in earplugs if you have to.

But don't give in, because they will eventually stop doing it.

If you give in and let them go out, the vocalization, just gonna get louder.

So don't give in to them.

Be strong, keep going forward with it.

Eventually this will be a great indoor cat if you really go through the steps, and prepare properly for them.

(bright upbeat music) >>There are many things that you can do to help with the problem of the overpopulation of cats, and in particular outdoor cats.

Obviously the easiest thing you can do is if you own a cat, keep it indoors.

Spay it or neuter it.

So you're not contributing to the population explosion that happens in too many communities.

If you want your cat to spend some time outdoors, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, consider building them a catio.

Like a gazebo for a cat.

There are many designs from the lavish and palatial, to something really basic and inexpensive.

Cats love them, wildlife loves having the cat confined, and your cat will be safe from the dangers that it can find out of doors.

If you already have a cat that spans part of its time, or all of its time outdoors, consider transitioning that animal to an indoor cat.

It's easy to do.

Now, a lot of times people will tell me oh, the cat sits by the door, and he'll dart outside every time I opened the door.

Well, a spray bottle or a squirt gun will cure that behavior.

Doesn't hurt the cat, and very quickly they will learn not to sit there.

It'll be safer for the cat, it will be easier on you and quite honestly, better for the wildlife in your community.

Now, if you are considering getting a cat by all means, go to a local shelter or a TNR group, or to a cat adoption agency in your community, and get one of these cats off the street.

Everyone that you bring in, is one less that will face the trials and tribulations of an outdoor existence.

And one less that will be taking its toll on wildlife.

And lastly, if you're talking to others about this very, very contentious issue, keep your cool.

There is a lot of room for all of us to improve our knowledge, and in some cases, our demeanor, when we have this conversation.

But the bottom line is, cats outdoors take a toll on wildlife.

So the last thing is, if you find an animal that has been injured by a cat, rescue that animal and get it to a wildlife rehabilitator, or to a veterinarian immediately.

A cat attack is a critical injury.

In most cases, if the animal is not started on antibiotics within six to eight hours, the chances of its survival are almost zero.

You can save that life.

The impact of cats on wildlife is a human problem.

You can be part of the solution >>Funding for Untamed, is brought to you by.

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