By Mark Nolte
The early morning hours were cool and calm. An occasional breeze tugged lightly at his tail as his head bobbed in and out of the trash can.
Fluffy was a typical campus cat. Whitish-gray. Elusive by day, approachable by night. Street smart... and hungry.
'I had an early morning custodial job, so I was walking up to campus at 4:30 in the morning,' said Joy Adams, 21, a senior from Yuba, Calif., majoring in recreation management. 'There was this garbage can that I walked by, and this cat must have been in there chowing down on something good. He heard me, and he jumped out and rattled the garbage can. He scared me to death, and then ran over to his little friends, and they scampered off together.'
Feral cats, or homeless housecats, darting in and out of bushes, begging for food and basking in the morning sunlight have become as common as Cosmo the Cougar here on BYU campus.
'I think we''ve seen a population increase,' said Duke Rogers, a professor of integrative biology. 'I''m noticing more.'
Rogers specializes in the conservation of mammals and has done research on rodents and bats.
Many feral cats originate from pet owners that move and leave their cat behind, thinking the cat will easily revert to a wild, or 'natural' life-style, Rogers said. Others are banned to the streets by landowners who don''t permit cats into their residences. Still other stray cats were probably kittens that got dumped onto the street because a family couldn''t sell them.
Students think they are helping the cats by feeding them, but they are actually propagating a problem, he said. Healthy cats breed, and with new cats comes less food for the whole population.
'I would suggest not feeding them,' Rogers said. 'Even though they''re used to human contact, they won''t make very good pets.'
Adams said resisting the urge to give the cats food would not solve the campus cat problem because they feed out of the trash cans anyway.
Feral cats pose other problems that can affect domesticated cats or even humans.
Rogers said many feral cats are not vaccinated and may carry feline leukemia, which could be passed on to domesticated cats. If the cats are rabies carriers, then a single bite on an unwary hand could transmit the disease to a human, Rogers said.
The growing feral cat population could negatively affect the stability of the quail population that lives on the south side of campus, Rogers said.
'Cats are the only documented case of a predator decimating wild populations,' Rogers said. 'They are good mousers, but they also do a good number on the birds.'
Roy Peterman, BYU grounds director, said he deals with cats just like he deals with all the other animals - deer, geese and beavers - that wander up on campus.
'Our policy is to deal with (the animals) as they become a problem,' Peterman said.
He said if a cat becomes a problem, it will be trapped and removed from campus.
'If ''getting rid'' of the cats would result in them being destroyed, I am against it,' said Katyana Rogo-Manduli, 19, a junior from Nairobi, Kenya, majoring in computer science. 'If the university were to give homes to each one of the cats, then that would be a good thing, and I would be for it.'
Rogo-Manduli recently stopped outside the Twilight Zone to coax one of the campus cats a little closer to his hand. He said he missed his cat back home.
Currently there are no plans in place to trap the cats and place them in homes like Rogo-Manduli suggested because BYU Grounds only captures problem cats.
There are several organizations across the nation, like the Feral Cat Coalition of San Diego and Alley Cat Allies, that promote trapping of feral cats in order to spay or neuter them before they are re-released into the wild.
This program, known as 'trap-neuter-release,' is the most effective way to counteract the $50 million expense in tax dollars that goes towards caring for and sheltering feral cats in California, according to the FCC homepage.
Feral cat proponents and opponents alike will have the chance to make a difference on Feb. 25, National Spay Day USA. On this day participating animal hospitals are offering discounts on spays and neuters.
Contributing sources to this article said the campus cats are usually white or black and can be seen near the Wilkinson Student Center, buildings near the south end of campus and the pathway to the north of the Tanner Building.