Very interesting article.
I have had an opportunty to watch two feral colonies.
The first was right next door to me at what was a dairy farm.

The colony started due to people from nearby towns coming up from town and dumping thier cats off nearby and often times sneaking in a dumping whole litters of kittens in the milk house!

One of my first cats was from that colony. She was run off when she was nearing 6 months old and ended up with us. We took her in and tamed her. I have had problems from time to time with cats that came over from the colony causing problems with my resident cats before they were confined to the house.

The colony grew so large that a couple huge packs of coyotes moved into the area. Yes, coyotes will travel in a family pack. They are not always lone predators. We also now have a huge hawk, owl and vulture population as well as fishercats...all due to the colony next door which was decimated two years ago. But there are signs of 'new' cats having been dumped in the area again so I am suspecting a new colony to form this summer.

The lives of cats in that colony is miserable, very few live long and very few find their way to pet homes. Nearly every house in the vicinty of the farm has multiple cats that they have rescued from the farm of that moved to their home from the farm.

The second colony I have two of my cats from. That colony started at a friends barn. She has been doing her best to keep the ones in her barn area healthy and has even trapped and moved the colony twice. Disease comes in the form of sick cats being dumped or moving into the colony and the numbers are lessened as cats die. She has had trouble with coyotes preying on the colony...but unlike the farmer next to me she has made a couple safe havens in and around her barn.

My friend cannot afford to spay and neuter all of the colony. She tried twice and the colony has still grown due to people dumping cats at her place. (She lives up in rural Maine and the various feral cat programs are not up in her area.) She also cannot afford to vac all of the cats and she worries constantly about them getting sick.

I don't particulary like the idea of cats being spay/neutered and vac'd to be let back out 'in the wild' as I have seen what happens to them when they become prey. It is not pretty to hear a pack of coyotes move in on a moonlit night and hear them decimate a cat colony. It is actually horrific.

Education...we need to keep striving to educate people that companion animals are not 'throw away' items. Cats cannot live safely in the wild. The risk of disease and becoming prey is too great and it is cruel to leave a cat to such a horrible fate.

I hug my former colony cats and shiver to think what could have happened.