USC graduate Lauren Cunningham has cared for and volunteered with stray cats for years, including fostering and adopting.
She has fed stray cats behind a Hardees and has taken care of kittens abandoned behind a barn. Each cat comes from different circumstances and has a different backstory, she said.
"I'm a cat mom," Cunningham said. "I have two indoor cats and then an outdoor cat that actually started as a stray that just started coming up to our house for food, and then my family's also currently fostering a four-month-old kitten."
It is hard to say how many stray and feral cats live in a single city. But it would not surprise Dawn Wilkinson, the executive director of the Columbia Humane Society, if Columbia residents are seeing more of them.
Many factors can influence cat population growth, including lack of veterinary care, lack of predators and weather, Wilkinson said. Additionally, organizations hit a roadblock when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, preventing them from continuing their spay and neuter efforts, Wilkinson said.
"When COVID occurred, a lot of spay and neuter clinics had to shut down, us included, and we've been trying to play catch-up ever since," Wilkinson said. "It took a decade to get there, and so it could very well take another decade to get back to where we were."
Not enough veterinarians
Cats reproduce quickly, especially in a warm climate such as South Carolina's, Wilkinson said.
Kitten season barely ends. Female cats can become pregnant at only four months and can be pregnant multiple times a year since a cat's pregnancy lasts only a couple of months.
Another problem in the fight to spay and neuter community cats is a shortage of veterinary care in Columbia, Wilkinson said.
This reflects a national veterinary shortage that is also impacting people's pets when they need emergency veterinary care, according to the Guardian. South Carolina ranks 46th out of 50 states in the number of veterinarians per 1000 people, according to the Charleston Animal Society.
The veterinary shortage can be attributed in part to the high-stress nature of the career, which deals with long hours and life-or-death situations, and short staffing only makes that worse, according to the Guardian.
Wilkinson said that many South Carolina vets retired around the time the pandemic hit and haven't necessarily been replaced. Furthermore, the veterinary shortage may be felt in South Carolina because the state lacks a veterinary school, though Clemson plans to open one in the next few years.
"The veterinary shortage has many different causes, and they've kind of all come together over the last five or six years of not addressing any issues," Wilkinson said. "Now we're kind of in this predicament where that's caused a lag behind in spay and neuter of animals."
A policy change
Cat population control faces several challenges in South Carolina, and the most effective method is spaying and neutering community cats, Wilkinson said.
South Carolina lacks a significant proportion of large predators, such as coyotes, bears and wolves, Wilkinson said. This means cats do not have predators hunting them while they live outside, which is a form of population control in other parts of the country, Wilkinson said.
Columbia city ordinances changed in 2017 to protect community cats — a term that incorporates both stray cats, who may be socialized, and feral cats, who are not.
Previously, cats were often brought in off the street and euthanized as a method of population control. Now, the policy is to engage in Trap Neuter Release efforts, and community cats are protected by the ordinance, which allows free-roaming cats to live in Columbia as long as efforts to spay and neuter the cats are occurring.
Trap Neuter Release, commonly called TNR, is the process in which cats are trapped, brought to clinics to be spayed or neutered and released back into the community. Cats often receive a rabies vaccine during this process as well. This is the most effective way to keep cat populations down, said Victoria Riles, the superintendent of Columbia Animal Services.
Riles said that many people's instinct is to feed the cats but not take them in to be spayed or neutered and vaccinated. She recommends that people not feed community cats if they cannot offer or find them other care because it leads to the creation of cat colonies. And once the cats begin to gather and live in the same place, kittens will follow two months later.
"You definitely need community involvement to do TNR. The cats can't spay and neuter themselves," Riles said. "If you're experiencing this within your community, be an active participant and community member and work to get the cats spayed and neutered, because spay and neuter has proven to actually decrease numbers, whereas euthanasia has not."
What students can do
There are a variety of Columbia area groups that engage in TNR, foster and adoption efforts, including some that come to campus. Students who live off campus can also help in TNR efforts by bringing cats into Columbia-based organizations that do reduced-price spaying and neutering for community cats, Riles said.
Pawmetto Lifeline spays and neuters feral cats for $50. Anyone looking to spay or neuter community cats can also apply for vouchers through the Richland County Community Cat Diversion Program that can be used at Pawmetto Lifeline and the Humane Society to reduce the cost of getting veterinary care for the cat.
When people bring cats in to be fixed, they will most likely need to keep the cat overnight after surgery to keep an eye on it, Wilkinson said.
"This is a community issue, (one) that students can be active in helping to resolve this issue and care for these animals so that they are not neglected," Wilkinson said.
Students can also foster cats and kittens. Once kittens are old enough to be separated from their mothers, fostering is an effective way to give cats care even when shelters are full. Columbia Animal Services also typically has 10 to 20 adult cats available or adoption, Riles said.
Another option is volunteering for organizations such as Cat About Town, a Crenshaw county-based nonprofit that helps track, manage and care for stray cat colonies and helps place cats with foster families.
Cunningham said volunteering with Cat About Town and another organization, Fostering Felines, meant a lot to her as a USC student. It even helped her to adopt one of her cats.
"That's a relationship I've continued past graduation, and I really appreciated that, even as a campus student, Fostering Felines and other community organizations allowed an avenue for me to get involved and be around cats," Cunningham said.
Karen Lee Wells, the co-chair and foster coordinator of Cat About Town, said that the organization is always looking for volunteers to help trap and foster community cats and that people should always consider adopting shelter cats.
"Even if you don't adopt from us, it doesn't matter to me, adopt a cat with a shelter, adopt a cat from the rescue," Wells said. "You're really saving two lives. Because you're saving the life of the cat that you adopted, and you're opening up a space for another cat to be saved."