June 17, 2013 Health Officer Lawrence Taltoan Members of the Board of Health Radnor Township 301 Iven

Ave. Wayne, PA 19087-5297 Via e-mail: ltaltoan@radnor.org Dear Officer Taltoan and Honorable Members of the Board, We hope you are well. We have received a copy of proposed changes to the township's animal control ordinance (Chapter 115 Animals) that will be discussed at the Board of Health meeting on Monday, June 17, 2013. PETA strongly supports the proposed changes and hopes we can be of help. Not only is requiring that those who feed free-roaming homeless cats be held to minimum standards of care is not only reasonable, it's also critical to the wellbeing and standard of living of everyone in the community. The reality is that leaving catseven those who are sterilizedto fend for themselves on the streets is dangerous, even life-threateningto the cats, the public, and local wildlife. Please consider the following information. Dangers to Cats The practice of piling and scattering animal food does more harm than good and sends the dangerousand wrongmessage to the public that cats thrive outdoors without daily attention, parasite prevention, regular veterinary medical care, adequate and safe shelter, and more. But nothing could be more untrue. Our office receives countless reports of incidents in which cats"managed" or notsuffer and die horribly because they must struggle to survive outdoors. PETA's caseworkers routinely handle cruelty cases involving outdoor cats who have been poisoned, shot, mutilated, tortured, set afire, skinned alive, and killed in other cruel ways, often by property owners or neighbors who just didn't want the cats there, regardless of the cats' reproductive and/or vaccination status. In Meshoppen, Pa., in September 2012, more than 20 homeless cats in a "managed" colony suddenly became ill and/or died from suspected poisoning. Two feral cats were euthanized at a veterinary clinic after becoming so weak that they could be captured by hand for transport to the animal hospital. Meanwhile, in the same month, two feral cats in a colony being fed in northeast Philadelphia were shot to death with a pellet gun. The colony's feeder said, "I think people think of cats as rodents. There's a lot of haters who don't understand about the animals." Dangers to Public Safety

The Pennsylvania Department of Health reports that "[r]abid cats are an especially serious problem in Pennsylvania. From 2008 to 2010, Pennsylvania reported more rabid cats than any other state. Most human exposures to rabid cats in Pennsylvania involved feral (free roaming or stray cats). Most often multiple persons, and in some cases also livestock, were bitten." Stray and feral cat-feeding stations attract raccoons, skunks, foxes, and other species who are rabies vectors and considered "nuisance" species by many, through no fault of their own. A recent study published in The Wildlife Professional found that "[w]hile coyote attacks on humans are rare when human attacks have occurred there is a correlation between high percentages of anthropogenic food sourcessuch as dog food, trash, and domestic cats" (emphasis added) and states further that reducing such incidents "might require removing all exterior food sources, including cats." Dangers to Local Wildlife Roaming cats terrorize and kill countless birds and other wildlife who are not equipped to deal with such predators. A recent New York Times article reports that feral cats cause the majority of cat-caused deaths in the U.S., an astounding "2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat." The American Bird Conservancy reports that "[c]at predation is one of the reasons why one in three American bird species are in decline." I can be reached at 443-320-1277 or TeresaC@peta.org. Thank you for all your hard work for the citizens of Radnor Township. Yours very truly,

Teresa Chagrin Animal Care and Control Specialist Cruelty Investigations Department Enclosure: Pennsylvania Department of Health "Rabies in Cats Fact Sheet"