Building Sustainable Habitats for Free-Roaming Cats in Public Spaces: A Systematic Literature Review

ABSTRACT

This review article examines the possibility of providing a toolkit to prepare habitats for free-roaming cats (FRCs) in public spaces. The toolkit targets local communities, authorities, stakeholders, and advocates in the cities of the Global South, to raise awareness and improve the welfare of FRCs living in urban communities. This article explores a relatively new area in urban studies and veterinary science, and its connection to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A systematic review was conducted using bibliometric analysis, which illustrated how the literature on urban studies ignores the sustainability of public spaces as a living space for FRCs. This study contributes to our understanding of the current situation of FRCs from a theoretical perspective, in relation to the urban transformation of low-income and high-poverty countries. The article concludes with a four-pillar toolkit to help impoverished communities use public spaces as a resource, build sustainable habitats, and provide living spaces for FRCs.

KEYWORDS:

• Animal welfare
• felis catus
• Global South
• public spaces
• sustainable design

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge their institutions for providing support in conducting bibliometric analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data used to generate the results in this paper are available and listed in Appendix One [https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14946408].

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. The “crude estimate” of the total worldwide cat population living in a community setting and those claimed by humans is 700 million (Watson, 2018, p. 535).

2. The literature uses the term “sustainability” to refer to the ability to endure, somewhat consistently, throughout multiple areas of life (James, 2015). Research also refers to “sustainable development” when referring to the Earth’s biospheres and human civilization’s ability to coexist (AlWaer, Bickerton, & Kirk, 2014). Many in the profession describe sustainability as the interconnected domains of environment, economics, and society; however, there are initiatives to broaden its scope to include other human undertakings. Sustainable design is concerned with creating systems that are adaptable and reversible (Fawcett, Hughes, Krieg, Albrecht, & Vennström, 2012). Similarly, the sustainable neighborhood is constructed and explored via the lenses of culture, technology, and politics (Kohon, 2018).

3. Not long ago, the Global South was called the “Third World” or “developing countries.” It includes low-income or impoverished countries, as well as those lacking technology and modern sciences, such as African countries and Asian countries, except for Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Latin American countries. It also includes countries of Oceania, except Australia and New Zealand.

4. In Europe, “population control of unwanted free-roaming and wild animals has largely been carried out by killing them, using means such as hunting, trapping, and poison” (Palmer et al., 2018, p. 199).

5. We take as an example Robert Duvall (2002) notes in the film Assassination Tango. Argentina’s sensual world of tango – in Buenos Aires, and away from the political views – differs from the tango in the U.S., seen on the television program, Dancing with the Stars (Renteria, 2015).

6. To get the journal’s h-index, the journal must publish at least h papers, each of which has been referenced at least h times, in order to get the maximum possible h-index.

7. Appendix One can be reached using the following link [https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14946408].

8. Crawford et al. (2019) argue that reducing the stray cat population through TNR programs may be challenging. This program is costly and relies on achieving colony extinction or declining stray cat numbers.

9. It should be noted that the elimination of stray or feral animals in Western cities has a long history: a) in Australia, about 250,000 healthy dogs and cats are killed in pounds annually, and b) in the U.S., approximately half of 8 million homeless dogs and cats are placed, killed, or die of infections in shelters (Narayanan, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Science, Technology, and Innovation Funding Authority (STDF) [grant number: BARG–37234].