You are absolutely right about the wild or feral cats’ coats looking dusty. Although I have not seen it described formally, my own observation of cats over many years is that cats take dust baths, much the same way that chinchillas do. When pet cats roll around on their backs in sand or gravel, people usually think that they are just being playful. But play behaviors always refer back to some other more basic, necessary behavior. It isn’t just tame pet cats that exhibit the rolling behavior; small wildcats from arid areas do that too.

I think that the rolling behavior cleans and fluffs the cats’ fur, and possibly disguises the scent to a degree, by making the cat smell like its surroundings. Maybe the dusty appearance even has its own survival value, causing the coat not to be very shiny and reflective. The dust or sand probably also helps to rid the cat of parasites like fleas by acting as a dessicant.

I have always loved cats, not the least because they were probably the more dependable half of my family growing up, and in my estimation far more trustworthy. I would never do anything to harm one, yet I agree that they can pose an ecological hazard in some environments, particularly small islands. In those cases, I fully support their removal by any means necessary.

Aside from a few dinosaurs and sharks, whose repuutations I suspect have more to do with Hollywood than reality, I think cats, both big and small, represent this planet’s supreme Uber-predators. When I hear tales of the world’s smallest feline (Felis nigripes, or the Black-Footed Cat) being able to take down giraffes, I can almost believe it.

There is a difference in feral cats that live like wild animals, out to themselves in the forest or bush, and feral cats that have a sort of semi-tame existence on the fringes of human society.

Feral cats that live in the wild are ususually more solitary, and often quite healthy. Their lifestyle is more like that of a wildcat than a domestic. Their population density in any given wild area is not so dense as that of ferals who have a semi-steady food supply. Many of the “wild” feral kittens do not survive, mainly because other predators take them as prey. There aren’t a lot of scrawny, sickly adults, because the unhealthy ones just do not usually survive to maturity. The toms, especially, get scarred from fights and often suffer from abcesses due to infected wounds, but they either heal quickly or die. Since these “wild” feral cats eat whole animal food and not garbage, they do not suffer the nutritional deficiencies that more urban ferals do. Cats living wild tend to have much shorter, more violent lives, and they rarely ever die from old age, but they are often the picture of feline health.

Please don’t take this as an advocation of allowing feral populations to fluorish. I advocate no such thing, and I believe that pet cats should be surgically sterized. I support neuter-and-release programs for strays and ferals. Those programs are great because they not only prevent existing ferals from reproducing, but by releasing the neutered cats back into their territory, it helps to prevent other cats from moving into that territory. Eventually, feral populations could be nearly eliminated in this way (but it is expensive).

The main problem with feral cats is that they have to kill small animals to survive, and they are super-predators that can out-compete native predators in many cases, and they also are very prolific breeders, so they can quickly overwhelm fragmented or isolated populations of small prey, which have evolved no real defenses against them.

DWA, you just made my day!

The track does look to be about 12 to 18 inches wide as someone wrote, and very typical of a bush track. A week ago I walked about 12 miles through the Royal National Park south of Sydney, on tracks like this, through bush and on fire trails. Fire trails are very much wider and look very different in colouration and texture, which is what leads me to agree on the 12 to 18 inches wide theory… which of course implies: housecat.

Meow.

Chris.

Having met one in the wild, close up and personal, it sure didn’t look like this kitty!

Hollis