
 
 This photo illustrates a camera trap photo of a domestic cat. (Photo by Michael Cove, courtesy of Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute) 
 
 Cats are controversial. 
 
 Aside from the question of whether a person prefers dogs, felines have long been blamed for killing wildlife like birds and small mammals. For more than a century, humans have asked whether they can control the mighty, moody cat and use its predatory prowess for pest control. (Hence programs like the Blue Collar Cats, which pairs antisocial cats with local businesses that want help keeping rodents at bay.) 
 
 Now, a newly launched project in D.C. has a question that sounds deceivingly simple: just how many cats live here? 
 
 The answer, as it turns out, will require three years and $1.5 million to get the D.C. Cat Count. And even then, the effort from the Humane Rescue Alliance, the Humane Society of the United States, the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, and PetSmart Charities serves more as a rough gauge than an exact headcount. 
 
 "There's too many cats in too many places," says Bill McShea, a wildlife ecologist with Smithsonian's National Zoo who is in charge of collecting data on outdoor felines. "We’re going to do this as an estimate of cats." 
 
 Right now, the number of felines in the city is "impossible to say," says Lauren Lipsey, the vice president of community programs at the Humane Rescue Alliance. HRA averages about 2,000-3,000 cat adoptions annually (about two-thirds of their total pet adoptions), with all owners agreeing to keep the cats indoors. The organization also traps, neuters, and returns to the streets about 1,000 more felines. 
 
 But they have little sense if their programs are the lion's share of adoptions in the city, or if their trap-neuter-return program is effective in helping to control the cat population. 
 
 The population data will "be really helpful to have us tailor what our programs and services are for the cats of the city," says Lipsey. "We want to understand the movement and flow of cats." 
 
 The main tool of the project will be camera traps, which is a common technique in surveying other kinds of wildlife. 
 
 McShea says they will be looking to get as many pictures of cats as possible, by setting the 60 infrared cameras up on city blocks, in backyards, by dumpsters, and in parks. 
 
 "With cats we have the advantage that most of them are individually marked," so people can distinguish between them, says McShea. "We have to see cats more than once—that’s the key, and the more I see them, the better. We'll be getting as many pictures of cats wandering out there as possible" 
 
 He says that D.C. Cat Count will also have an app, which they're hoping to roll out by Christmas, so that residents can submit their own photos of cats roaming. 
 
 McShea and his team have already stratified the city into different habitat-types based on housing density, tree density, and economic strata. He says there's a correlation between lower income neighborhoods and increased feral cat populations, as well as more cats in residential areas more broadly. 
 
 Tuesday serves as the official project launch, says Lipsey, meaning that they've purchased all the supplies, including the 60 cameras, and have contracts in place with researchers like McShea. The D.C. Cat Count will also be bringing on board two full-time staffers who will work as field crew. 
 
 Other elements of the count will include a home survey and an analysis of shelter populations. The effort, slated for completion in June 2021, will rely on community support for placing the cameras, volunteers for neighborhood walks, and responses to surveys. 
 
 So is this feline census an indicator that the involved organizations are picking a favorite in the neverending debate between cats and dogs? 
 
 "Dogs have a little bit of a different position in our society," says Lipsey. "If they're running at large that’s against the law—they need to be caught and brought in." Cats, on the other hand, are allowed "to be a lot more prevalent. Cats also have larger litters. There are just more cats." 
 
 Reporting contributed by WAMU's Jacob Fenston. ||||| Washington, D.C., Is Counting All Its Cats. It Will Take 3 Years And $1.5 Million 
 
 Counting cats, much like herding them, is a complicated proposition. 
 
 But a coalition of groups in Washington, D.C., is giving it a shot. 
 
 PetSmart Charities, the Humane Society, the Humane Rescue Alliance and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute are collaborating on a project called the D.C. Cat Count, which aims to create a more accurate estimate of the city's entire cat population — both feral cats and pet cats. 
 
 The project is anticipated to take three years and cost $1.5 million. The groups hope the data will help improve efforts to manage the cat population. 
 
 As Jacob Fenston of member station WAMU explains, "cats are controversial. ... felines have long been blamed for killing wildlife like birds and small mammals." 
 
 In some cases, as The Washington Post reports, cats threaten protected or endangered species. But in other cases, they can be helpful at reducing pest populations, like rats. 
 
 Various groups are working to spay and neuter stray cats or facilitate cat adoptions. Thousands of cats each year are spayed or adopted. 
 
 But groups like the Humane Rescue Alliance "have little sense if their programs are the lion's share of adoptions in the city, or if their trap-neuter-return program is effective in helping to control the cat population," Fenston writes. 
 
 It's not easy to gauge a city's cat population by eye alone. 
 
 "Cats are hard to see," conservation biologist Tyler Flockhart told The New York Times. "You see very few cats when you're out walking around. And that's because they're secretive animals. When you see a cat, there is almost certainly more than one there." 
 
 The project is unusual in both its scope — looking at the entire city — and its decision to include pet cats as well as feral ones. 
 
 After all, the project website notes, "the cat population in any area is ... an interconnected and dynamic network comprised of unowned cats living outdoors, owned cats who may live either indoors or outdoors, and shelter cats who often move into or out of the other population segments." 
 
 According to the site, the project will use a number of strategies to arrive at a total population count: 
 
 "Camera trapping" — a camera triggered by an animal's presence, not an actual trap — to estimate the outdoor cat population 
 
 Household surveys to estimate the owned cat population 
 
 An analysis of the number of cats at shelters 
 
 A physical count of outdoor cats in sample locations, to compare with the camera trapping data 
 
 A statistical model to explore "the interactions between cat population segments" 
 
 The development of a set of tools to help other groups do similar counts 
 
 The project also hopes to roll out an app allowing residents to snap their own images of cats, Fenston reports. ||||| University of WisconsinArchive-It Partner Since: Aug, 2007Organization Type: Colleges & UniversitiesOrganization URL: http://archives.library.wisc.edu This collection currently includes two distinct sub-collections: The UW-Madison Collection and The Stem Cell Research Archives Project.The UW-Madison Collection includes University of Wisconsin Web sites that document many aspects of campus life including university administration, colleges, departments, and major campus organizations, student life, research, buildings, and special and ongoing events. We also crawl UW System and Colleges administration and UW Extension Web sites.The Stem Cell Research Archives Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries collects, preserves, and provides access to records of stem cell research at UW-Madison and reactions in Wisconsin to work accomplished or underway at UW-Madison.For more information about these collections or UW campus history, visit http://archives.library.wisc.edu or contact uwarchiv@library.wisc.edu. On Wisconsin!
– A $1.5 million project launched in Washington, DC, has one main goal: count all the cats. DC Cat Count, a collaboration by the Humane Society, Humane Rescue Alliance, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, and PetSmart Charities, aims to create an accurate estimate of the entire cat population, including pet cats, in order to better manage it. About 1,000 DC cats are trapped, spayed or neutered, and released each year by the Humane Rescue Alliance; as many as 3,000 more are adopted out, with owners pledging to keep the cats inside. But it's "impossible to say" how many cats are really out there or how effective the programs are in terms of curtailing the cat population, community programs VP Lauren Lipsey tells DCist. "We want to understand the movement and flow of cats." So far, though, "just walking around the neighborhood counting cats, we were surprised at how few cats we've seen," Lipsey tells the Washington Post. Cats—which threaten rodents like mice and rats, but also birds and protected or endangered species—are "secretive animals" and therefore "hard to see," but that doesn't mean they aren't around, conservation biologist Tyler Flockhart tells the New York Times. To ensure an accurate tally, the DC Cat Count will use 60 motion-activated cameras, shelter analyses, and household surveys, in addition to physical counts in sample locations, in an undertaking led by two full-time employees, per NPR. The effort is expected to take three years, with an app to be released by Christmas allowing locals to take part by snapping photos of the cats they see. (This judge sued over his neighbor's urinating cat.)