April 2020, ScientificAmerican.com 39sible to restrict them all to the 2,500-acre property.
Over several weeks in 2010 and 2011, biologists
released 27 tagged woodrats into the refuge. Within
weeks cats killed every one of them. “They spent mil-
lions of dollars to show that cats eat rats,” DeGayner
says. The breeding program was scrapped. And the
antagonism between the cat advocates and the con-
servationists intensified.
AN ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION
Humans did not domesticate cats as actively as they
did dogs. As a result, there are far fewer genetic dif-ferences between house cats and wildcats than
between dogs and wolves. But cats have lived along-
side humans for more than 10,000 years. Grain
stored by early farmers at tract ed rodents, and the
rodents lured cats, which then stayed for our food
scraps (and maybe a scratch or two behind the ears).
Wherever humans went, cats followed—and multi-
plied. A female cat can start re pro duc ing at less than
a year old and can have as many as three litters of
five or more kittens each year for the rest of her life.
It is not surprising, then, that people have been com-
plaining about cat overpopulation for decades.FREE-ROAMING
cat investigates
a woodrat nest in
the Crocodile Lake
National Wildlife
Refuge in Florida.© 2020 Scientific American