Mike the Tiger may be the most popular feline on LSU’s campus, but he’s not the only one.Students may notice a more common species, the Felis catus or house cat, around campus, and these cats are not new inhabitants.”I was cutting through the Coates [Hall] parking lot where I’d park there on the weekends to get to the library, and there were all these cats around,” said Merle Suhayda, a volunteer who helps control the cat population on campus. “And I thought, ‘There’s not food. There’s no water. There’s just like 10 or 12 cats around. This isn’t right.’ It really bothered me.”The Humane Society of the United States defines a feral cat as “the offspring of lost or abandoned pet cats or other feral cats,” which Suhayda said describes stray cats on campus.GETTING STARTEDSuhayda said she was finishing her undergraduate degree at the University in the late 1980s when she first noticed the feral cats on campus.Suhayda’s realization that an uncontrolled cat population could be a problem on campus — along with her love for cats — sparked a process that continues today.”I worked a deal with a guy through Facility Services … named Bob Dilemuth,” Suhayda said. “Bob supplied me with the traps, and we started the preliminary stages of trapping cats, fixing them, marking them so we knew they were fixed and putting them back on campus.”The trapping began Suhayda’s use of a system called “Spay-Neuter-Release” to try to control the feral population on campus. The Humane Society of the United States also advocates the system, which it calls “Trap-Neuter-Return.”Suhayda said she and Caye Drapcho, a former University professor, trapped the cats with other volunteers and brought them to the School of Veterinary Medicine to be spayed or neutered before relocating them to barn homes or re-releasing them onto campus.WORKING OUT THE KINKSThe Vet School holds surgical labs about once each month to spay or neuter the cats the volunteers bring in. Holly Carey, an associate clinical specialist at the school, said the school still holds the lab once a month.”We do a surgical lab where the students spay and neuter and test them for feline leukemia and things like that,” Carey said. “[The volunteers bring in] probably about six or seven a month. That’s a rough estimate … sometimes more, sometimes less.”Controlling the feral population would not have been possible without the Vet School’s agreement to fix the cats, Suhayda said.”They had agreed to spay and neuter every five weeks, and we started trapping on a five-week schedule,” Suhayda said. “But that does nothing when you have 500 cats. They’re breeding way faster than that.”Another veterinarian in Baton Rouge agreed to help the volunteers by neutering cats during the spans between the Vet School’s surgical labs.”That made it a doable project,” Suhayda said. “I don’t think we’d have ever accomplished anything if we could only trap every five weeks, and no one could afford to do this because you’re talking $50 a cat and there’s 500 cats. Who’s going to shell out $25,000 out of their own pocket to do this? So the vet was a godsend, and the Vet School has been wonderful to me.”CONTROLSuhayda said the feral population on campus has drastically decreased since she began her initial efforts 20 years ago.”Now I would say 99 percent of the campus is down to one cat or two cats, instead of 10 or 12 — or possibly even 15 at some sites — and 25 at two sites,” Suhayda said. “I would say except for [Tiger] Stadium, the campus is under control.”Kirk Guilbeau, an Athletic Department employee who helps the department control the cats in the athletic facilities, said the stadiums on campus are popular homes for the cats because of the many “nooks and crannies.””At Tiger Stadium itself, there might be a dozen of them,” Guilbeau said. “You’ll see some of the regular ones sometimes, and sometimes you’ll see a couple new one.”Suhayda said she plans to focus on the population at Tiger Stadium in the spring once she finishes working on another site Suhayda said is more of a problem.Suhayda would not name the other site because she was worried students might annoy or hurt the cats.LINGERING PROBLEMSTodd Jeansonne, assistant director of athletic facilities and grounds, said the cats have presented numerous problems in Tiger Stadium.”I’d rather have no cats,” Jeansonne said. “One issue that we had in the stadium is we have insulation around our hot water pipes, and a cat has always got to claw things. We had to go in and do some serious repairs to the insulation around these water pipes throughout the stadium.”Jeansonne said while the damages may not be large in the overall operation of the stadium, they are still a concern.”You could call that minor when you’re talking about the size of Tiger Stadium, but it’s still an issue,” Jeansonne said. “Anything that goes down in part of the stadium … it’s a major issue in that area, but overall in the stadium it’s probably a minor issue.”Yet, the cats may also provide their share of benefits.”They are rodent control,” Suhayda said. “If the cats are around, they’re going to deal with rodents. If the rodents aren’t around, they’re going to deal with pigeons. They’re always going to have some kind of critter coming around.”But Jeansonne said those benefits may be diminished by students feeding the cats.”Since someone has been putting food out in front of the Lawton rooms for these cats, I’ve seen a decrease in the number of pigeons that have been killed,” Jeansonne said. “Also, over the past six or eight months, we’ve also seen an increase in mice and rats in the stadium … Just by [students and passers-by] feeding them, they’re made less active in the stadium.”
—- Contact Jerit Roser at jroser@lsureveille.com
Volunteers, employees help control cats on campus
December 3, 2008