BY PAT SUMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

A Bordentown Township resident who cares for seven feral cats recently lost his fight against the community's four-pets-per-household policy. He'll now keep four newly licensed ferals indoors, give two to his mother and allow the wildest one to get by on his own.

As the issues of feral cats and animal overpopulation arose again, they led to at least one positive outcome: the Bordentown Twp committee "will seek information about feral cat control from Burlington County, which conducts a trap, neuter and release program. . . "

Bordentown's debate about feral cats was only the latest in a string of such disputes on the subject. Communities around New Jersey have tried numerous responses - from forbidding residents to feed ferals to trapping and transporting them far from their wild homes to . . . uglier alternatives.

(See box with basic info about feral cats that follows this story.)

Luckily, feral cats in Mercer County, New Jersey and nearby Bucks County, Pa, have a champion, a seemingly tireless advocate and caretaker who volunteers both time and money to the cause known as "TNR" — or "Trap-Neuter-Return" — for feral cats.

Joyce Arciniaco grew up in a family of animal lovers and protectors. Early on, feral cats got her attention, and now she's the person many others turn to with related questions and problems.

• Feral kitten fleeing from a big dog in Trenton? Arciniaco to the rescue, helping the couple who scooped up "Crybaby" and gave her a loving home — her first.
• Colony of feral cats threatened by cat-haters who poison or shoot them with pellet guns? She fights for them, and TNR.
• Animal shelter threatening to kill the resident ferals? She's on the case, speaking up at a town council meeting.
• Just-trapped feral cats ready for sterilization? Arciniaco knows where to take them, and does. She knows feral cat helpers in three states and a growing number of high volume-low cost sterilization providers.
• Tamed feral kittens or cats needing a home after spay-neuter? She works on placing them, including in her own home.

Only the most wild feral cats in a colony are returned to where they started after being sterilized. Kittens are often "pulled out and placed because they can easily be socialized." Then come the less wild adults who show promise of settling in.

Some rescue people keep the most needy ferals of all — "You don't keep the nice ones who would move, you keep the needy ones," Arciniaco says. Right now, she's trying to help a five-month old kitten ("who looks like three months and is so sweet") with neurological damage and chronic conjunctivitis. Together, they've visited four vets so far.

"They're truly the most forgotten and most voiceless of them all," Arciniaco says of feral cats. "They don't cry out at all, even in traps, crates, carriers. It takes a long time for them to meow when being socialized. I don't know if this is a natural instinct that protects them."

"And yet they can change, depending on their age. Get one at two months, it takes a week to tame; get one at three months, it's two weeks. Or else just "fix" them and let them live out their lives where they had been."

That's the "Return" part of the three-step TNR approach. It means that "fixed" ferals who can't or won't be adopted for domestic life should be returned to the place they came from, with its known environment and food source. ("Release" is sometimes used instead of "Return," but that word is not as explicit about returning cats to their original environment.)

When TNR occurs with a whole colony of feral cats and they're returned to their starting place, they live out their lives without adding kittens to the mix, so gradually the colony dies out. It's a much more humane approach than most all the alternatives.

A New Jersey native who now lives in nearby Yardley, Pa., Arciniaco holds a managerial position with the State of New Jersey. Her "free" time sounds totally taken up by feral cats. Why? "Because I care. Because they can't help themselves."

With four siblings, she grew up in West Trenton, often visiting grandparents in the Chambersburg section of Trenton. There, she became aware of homeless cats and kittens, as well as animal abuse — all no doubt the beginnings of her advocacy efforts.

Together, she and her three sisters have the animal bases pretty well covered: birds, horses, Rotweillers and feral cats. A board member of the Humane Society of the US (HSUS), her brother's also president of the Fort Lauderdale wildlife center.

Arciniaco notes that those who help feral cats through TNR usually do so voluntarily, thus performing a community service for free. They control the animal population humanely without using tax dollars. (Though TNR people usually foot the bill, sometimes they're associated with a nonprofit and can apply for grants, she says.)

Every town has a feral cat problem, though it's not always acknowledged, she says. She knows people in Princeton who work on it covertly, while in Ewing, the issue has caused heated town council meetings, with threats and firings at the animal shelter.

To her, it's simple: feral moms are the root of the problem because they can produce two-three litters a year. As they're prevented from doing that, the number of ferals steadily declines. That knowledge helps Arciniaco keep going. TNR is a process that works, but it takes persuasion, education and public awareness to win its acceptance and practice.

Veterinarians should be educating people about TNR, she believes. She's for talking it up in shelters, pet shops and rescue groups, where inevitably there are employees and members who don't know how to do TNR. They can't handle the ferals themselves, and/or they don't know how to find providers for the surgery and the shots.

"Those who make money off animals should be responsible" for helping solve the feral cat problem. The word must get out and the process must become routine so that feral cats with an "ear tip" (a small scallop nipped from one pointed ear to denote the animal was neutered, immunized and returned) can become the rule, not the lucky exceptions.

In Arciniaco's ideal world, federal legislation would shut down all puppy mills and spay-neuter would be required for cats. Drug companies would be charged to come up with feline contraceptives and veterinary schools would require students to do spay-neuter procedures as a community service.

But since that dream world hasn't yet arrived, Arciniaco's free time, money and commitment will remain focused on feral cats. As she has said, "They can't help themselves."

Readers who want to learn more about, donate to or volunteer for feral cats may contact any or all of the following: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , www.APLNJ.org/projectTNR or www.forgottencats.org.

The word "feral" means (1) existing in a wild or untamed state; (2) having returned to an untamed state from domestication. Feral cats, therefore, were either felines born in the wild to existing ferals or strays, or domestic cats who were abandoned or lost. In both cases, they are now wild animals, living outdoors and fending for themselves.

Thought to have missed proper socialization with humans during the critical period of two-12 weeks of age, feral cats typically avoid human contact, even though their behavior can be modified and some can become tame. They congregate in "colonies," often around a food source, and they reproduce often.

Without spaying or neutering and basic shots to help them survive in the wild, feral cats are the often-unhealthy-but-fertile parts of an ever-growing problem. (Together, feral and fertile mean ever-growing populations of wild cats — not good for them or for anyone.).

Sometimes feral colonies are maintained by well-meaning people who feed the cats without being aware that what's really needed is sterilization and medical care. Even when people know that, they often lack the money for treatment and/or the ability to catch and handle feral cats to begin with.

And so, without Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) volunteers, who know how to help the cats, as well as town policies supporting TNR, feral cats keep reproducing — while trying to stay alive.

Freelance writer Pat Summers also blogs at AnimalBeat.blogspot.com.