A First-Even Feral Cat Count in Toronto

Lauren Pelley's lede deserves top billing: "It's a stat that might give you paws: A whopping 17,000 feral cats could be roaming the streets of Toronto."

That play on words made possible by a first-of-its kind analysis by the Toronto Humane Society (THS), "which coupled survey responses from cat colony caretakers and data around land use and population density to come up with a new grand total of homeless felines," according to Pelley.

The number of feral cats has actually declined significantly in the past ten years, down from 100,000, according to previous estimates. The decline is good for cats, which suffer fights and disease while living on the streets of the city. The decline is also not the common experience in Ontario—in nearby Mississauga, some have dubbed the numbers of feral cats an epidemic.