Give jobs to wild cats

Gatushko.com

Many people seem to think so, and some organizations agree and are excited about a "green" way to exterminate rats while keeping cats alive.

The Tree House Animal Society in Chicago and the Humane Rescue Alliance in Washington, DC, both offer backyard rat killers, with programs called Tree House Cats at Work and Blue Collar Cats.


Both programs provide businesses or households with a small colony of two to three wild cats that have been vaccinated and sterilized. "Employers" help cats acclimatise to their new environment by sheltering them in long boxes of dogs, providing them with tasty food and providing them with comfortable shelters. This is done to ensure that cats, once they are on the move, will feel an incentive to return to their base instead of simply fleeing or joining another colony.After about a month, cats can be released from crates to begin their "work". In addition to killing rats, the very presence of the cat can deter rats from infesting an area. The urine of cats, while leaving their smell on things rubbing against them, marks a territory, and these odors make the rats think twice before even approaching such a zone.Once the cats are outside, it is the responsibility of the "employers" to keep the cats happy and healthy, to feed them regularly, to house them and to provide them with a safe place to use a bathroom, in addition to all the veterinary visits they need.

A Chicagoan, Victoria Thomas, told CNN in 2016 that once she hired Tree House Cats at Work, she "saw the rat holes right away, they disappeared." Before lodging the colony, Thomas spent nearly $ 4,000 for various efforts to prevent rats from catching his garden to no avail, including barbed wire and poisoned cinnamon rolls.Advocates view these programs as a boon to the environment in a variety of ways. He keeps wildcats out of shelters and does what they do best; he controls the rat population and he does it without counting on things that could harm the environment, such as rat poisons, which can infiltrate the food chain and cause damage to other animals such as owls and hawks .

"As far as rodent control is concerned, it's almost 100% effective," said CNN Liz Houtz, community leader at Tree House Cats at Work. "It's the only permanent, long-term solution that exists."




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