A Chicago animal shelter has reportedly deployed more than 1,000 feral cats onto the streets in an effort to fight the city’s rat problem.
The Windy City topped pest control company Orkin’s 2020 Top 50 Rattiest Cities List for the sixth time last year.
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Tree House Humane Society’s Sarah Liss told WGN 9 last weekend that the operation seems to be working.
“We’ve had a lot of our clients tell us that before they had cats, they would step outside their house and rats would actually run across their feet,” she said.
“They are actually deterring them with their pheromones. That’s enough to keep the rats away,” Liss said.
Tree House Humane Society’s Cats at Work program was initiated in 2012 in an effort to both combat the issue using an “environmentally friendly” control method and help what they call community cats.
The feral cats – which have been rescued, neutered and vaccinated – are placed two or three at a time into residential or commercial settings under the care of a registered caretaker.
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The cats acclimate in confinement for a period of three weeks before their release.
Tree House says on its website that the feral felines in Cats at Work colonies would not be able to thrive in a shelter or home environment and needed to be relocated for various reasons.
As mandated by Cook County’s 2007 Managed Care of Feral Cats Ordinance, cats in the program are managed for the entirety of their lives with support from Tree House.
A feral tabby cat sits on pavement. Chicago’s Tree House Humane Society has reportedly deployed more than 1,000 feral cats on city streets under the Cats at Work program in an effort to fight rat infestations.
(iStock)
Their presence in society alone repels the disease-carrying rodents, although the cats have been known to hunt and catch rats on occasion.
Tree House says other methods, like poison and traps, are short-term solutions and largely ineffective as there is a continuous food supply for the rodents and burrows are quickly repopulated.
Poison is also dangerous to more than just rats, especially when used around homes and businesses.
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To fight rodent infestations, community members can request the assistance of colonies for a fee of $600 to $800, according to Fox 32, although there is currently a “long waitlist.”
New York City has also turned to feral cats to fight its rat problem, with the 2016 introduction of the Feral Cat Initiative.