Stray cats overrun Ranch Cordova Park

That may actually work

Except that stray cats are not vaccinated and are known to carry rabies, feline leukemia virus, toxoplasmosis, feline enteritis (just to name a few), not to mention the flea and tick population that would make it unbearable for humans to be in that park with the cats. Ear mites are also a problem, because left untreated, they breed and grow colonies of their own in cats' ears, and being very painful and itchy, make the cats quite irritable. Stray cats are not housecats. A local city park is not a cat rescue farm. Rescue groups keep their cats vaccinated and healthy, and place them with adoptive families. I'm reasonably certain that a city is not going to want to pay for vaccines and ear wash for a bunch of strays in a park with the taxpayers' dollars. By law and by rights, Animal Control is required to step in and take the animals. For larger groups of animals, they typically send them to a rescue center, so that they don't have to pay overtime to the employees that would otherwise have to put the animals down, or house the animals in already-overcrowded shelters. Win-win.

Farie - if you take out one colony of feral cats, another colony starts. If you leave an intact colony in place, but fixing them, giving them at least one round of rabies shots, then new cats are less likey to move in and start it all again.

This is a PROVEN fact.

Well, if it is proven, then some reference would be helpful. As to the biological facts of it, we can deduce from ecological niche mathematics.

Cats + food + time= more cats.
Neutered cats + food + time= no more cats.

Except that the above theory assumes you neuter all the cats and no non-neutered cats appear in the population. The Neutered cats eat available food so there is less food a plenty to attract new cats to the area.

However, this is complicated by the observation that cats are also food.

Predator + food (cats) + time= more Predator.
Disease (a type of predator here) + food (cats) + time= more disease.

Cats do not just consume food, they are food. So, an existing supply of cats will attract something to feed upon them. This larger predator is probably not something you want in your neighborhood. To avoid attracting the larger predator, and increasing that population, you have to eliminate the food upon which it feeds. Neutered cats are not suddenly a non-food source.

So, by examining the expected logic of a ecological niche, we would expect that cats to slow down the population growth of cats, but neutering them is only a temporary suppression of population growth which is thwarted by an influx of new-non-neutered cats and the death of the old cats. Meanwhile, disease and larger predators are attracted by an existing feral cat population whether it is neutered or not.

That is just the mathematics of life.

Because you notch the ears of the fixed cats when an unfixed cat enters the population, you trap it and fix it as well

Chances are that besides predators already there they won't attact any others. But they have proven that a stable fixed feral cat colony pretty much finds a stable size and stays that way.

I know they can drop food with rabies vaccine for dogs/foxs/cyoyties, I wonder if they can do it for cats as well, tho canine rabies is very prevelant in Texas - where I know the Health Dept used to do the bait drops

This still leaves the problem of the fleas, ticks, and other parasites/diseases that transfer to HUMANS, as well as the fact that a CITY PARK is NOT an animal rescue farm!

Feral cats will stay away from people and the fleas and ticks and stuff would still be there even without the cats.

I know I have picked them up when there were no cats around since ticks live on the trees and will attack any animal and fleas jump off dogs too.