White with a patch of orange on its ear, a cat sits on its haunches on an Allen Building step. It is night, and the shorthair is the only illuminated figure on the academic quad. So still it might be ghost or statue, it is one of Duke’s resident feral felines.
Cats have a quiet presence all over West Campus: lone toms sunning on the Dillo patio, a calico scampering across the Bryan Center walkway, tabbies mewing from the bushes of BioSci. Duke is home to more than a dozen feral cat colonies.
Until last summer, a small, scraggly cat frequented the shrubbery of the Physics Building. The Physics students called her Schrodinger, but she was also known as Ribbons and Patches.
“Truthfully, she was hideously ugly, spotted all over, brown, yellow and all sorts of colors thrown in. She wasn’t a pretty looking cat but she was cute,” said Arya Roy, a final year graduate student in physics. “Of course, cats don’t really care what you call them. As long as you’re around, they purr.”
Roy, who came to Duke five years ago, said the cat had been a visitor at the Physics Building for 10 or 12 years before passing away. He took over cat feeding duties from former physics professor George Rogosa, who returned to put food out for the cats even after his retirement.
Since Schrodinger’s death over a year ago, however, Roy has stopped feeding strays.
“I didn’t want to make a habit of feeding lots of stray cats—when I go away who will feed them?” he asked.
Roy said unlike many strays, Schrodinger was affectionate and would sometimes rub up against his legs to be pet, but he didn’t allow her to do it often.
“I didn’t want to get her used to anything that wouldn’t be permanent,” he said.
Cats cause concerns
There are several theories for why Duke is home to so many feral felines. The campus is a sheltered environment with numerous food sources, and some suspect local pet owners abandon kittens on its grounds.
Although feral cats have won some hearts on campus, their presence is the cause for many concerns.
“They’re not native to this area—they’re not native to North America,” said Jeff Pippen, an associate in Research Staff at the Nicholas School of the Environment who has worked at Duke for 20 years.
Cats were first domesticated half a world away in the sands of Ancient Egypt. Most North American wildlife has not evolved to cope with the predatory threat they pose, Pippen said.
“Cats, we all know, are effective predators and they love to prey and hunt,” he said. “It’s been documented that they kill many small birds, small mammals and reptiles that are native to this area and belong in the forest.”
Helen Cook has worked at Duke as a clinical nurse for 25 years. In 1995, she saw a kitten warming itself on the lawn outside the Duke University Credit Union on Moreene Road. Since then, she has worked to care for and reduce the feral cat population on campus.
“I was not willing to just feed them because that’s not going to help the situation,” she said. “With feeding came neutering, spaying and vaccinating. It was a two-pronged effort there.”
Cook is part of an ongoing movement to reduce the Durham feral population using the Trap, Neuter, Release method, working with an organization called Operation Catnip. To trap a feral, Cook and other volunteers place food in a box that closes when a cat enters. Cook captures about 100 cats each month from the Durham area and takes them to be vaccinated, neutered and spayed with a voucher at a clinic. Neutered ferals are marked on the ear and released to the location where they were found.
Cook also rescues and socializes kittens so they can be adopted. This season, she found three at the Chapel. Cook estimates she and those helping her have socialized more than 100 kittens on Duke’s campus. She has half a dozen “kitties” herself, most of which have been rescued from University grounds.
Duke’s chapter of Students for the Protection of Animals also has plans for a TNR project with campus cats, said junior Matthew Slayton, the chapter’s current president. Pippen, however, said re-releasing ferals into the campus environment is unwise.
“If you successfully capture a feral cat from the wild, under no circumstances should it be returned to the wild,” he said.
In 2008, the Animal Protection Society of Durham received 2,497 cats, said Simon Woodrup, director of community outreach.
By county ordinance, all animals brought to the shelter can be housed there for a certain amount of time. Last year, 837 cats were euthanized after being deemed feral and unadoptable. For feral cats, life as a pet is not an option.
“Right now, you’ve got so many generations of feral, if they’re not kittens, then there’s no socializing,” said Janet Patterson, shop coordinator for the Physics Instrument Shop, who has worked with Cook for longer than she can remember.
Pippen said that in the interest of the campus ecosystem, sending the captured cats to a shelter is the best option.
“It may sound heartless, but my long-term goals are for the health of the environment and the health of the human population at Duke as well,” he said. “Ideally, all feral cats on campus are gone by whatever means are most humane.”
Roy, however, does not think that the cats pose much of a predatory threat.
“If Ribbons could hunt, I would love to see it,” he said. “Growing up with cats, if you feed them... they are lazy bastards. Yeah, they probably kill a bird or so.”
Pippen disagreed, insisting evidence does not show that feeding reduces hunting behavior and that predator instinct is deeply instilled in felines.
“I love cats,” he said. “I’m a cat person. My cats are kept indoors. They can be completely fed but if a mouse gets into the house, or a cricket, or a spider, that cat has found a play toy. That’s its nature. Even if well-fed, cats are still out killing native wildlife.”
Most agree, however, that re-releasing infertile cats is the best way to reduce the population. Cook said eradicating all cats would create a vacuum that invites other felines to move into the area.
Cats create community
Cook’s favorite cats were a couple, both members of the Credit Union colony: Brutus and Rena. Brutus was a stubborn brown tabby who escaped Cook’s traps for three years. She cared for him for more than a decade.
“I used to call him brute-ass. He wasn’t going into that cage, no way no how,” Cook said. “He was a big old honkin’ tom. He went from being an alpha tom to a rather mellow neutered boy.”
Brutus would saunter out of the woods when she arrived with food, Cook recalled. Sometimes it was a nice gallop. He would even rub up against her legs. His “lady,” Rena, was more reserved.
“[Rena] was sort of the matriarch and Brutus was the partriarch, and they were very cute,” Cook said. “I was glad that they hooked up.”
Cook said the Credit Union colony is shrinking—she has not seen kittens in the area since 1998, and has seen no signs of new ferals moving into the territory.
The building is not the only place on campus fewer cats call home. Cook recalled one warm summer a decade ago when her group removed 30 kittens from the area around Page Auditorium.
“We were literally running a kitten nursery,” she said. “There’s not nearly that number of cats anymore.”
Throughout the decade and a half she’s cared for campus cats, Cook has assembled a community of helpers.
“We have physicians, we have researchers. We have students, graduate students,” she said. “This has given me a great opportunity to basically get to know Duke. It’s a diverse group of people.”
Jack Chance, a security officer for the Duke University Police Department, has fed campus cats before and after work for seven years.
“As long as I work and I can afford the food, I’m keeping feeding them,” he said. “I’ve seen some real, real skinny from not having enough to eat.”
Chance has four cats of his own and names some on campus after their personalities. His favorite, Sisco, once hopped out of a bush with a bird in her mouth and presented it to him. He said he thought of it as her gift to him for feeding her.
“She got your heart and she would call you,” Chance said. “She was very verbal, and she liked telling you about her day.”
Anne Lacey, administrative coordinator of the Biological Sciences Building, occasionally puts food out for feline neighbors. In cold weather she sometimes finds them huddled on the steam vent. There’s an orange and white one, a little gray and a calico.
“The little gray one talks,” Lacey said. “If I go outside she meows and meows and meows, but if you get too close to her, she walks away.”
Cook has not seen a feral at the Credit Union in months—zero cats from a population that was once over 30. Rena died last June and about a year ago Brutus finished the food Cook gave him and trotted into the woods. He didn’t appear for her next visit.
“It’s like Brutus was the last,” she said, though she still puts food out at the Credit Union. “I would love for me to be out of business in terms of taking care of feral colonies—I would love it. But I want that to happen through attrition.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.