Feeding neighbourhood birds and cats: the generous gesture that mostly feeds rats (and what the law says)

There is one kind of site visit that almost always ends the same way, and it is a delicate one. We arrive at a residential building for a rat problem that has been reported for three months, we inspect the cellars, the service ducts, the bin room — everything is in order, sometimes even exemplary. Then we walk around the outside of the building and find, at the foot of the north wall, against a privet hedge, two plastic bowls and a 4 kg bag of kibble tucked under a tarpaulin. Three metres away, a burrow with fresh soil at the entrance.

We go back up to see the building manager and have to explain something that is never pleasant to hear: the problem does not come from poor maintenance, it comes from a resident who, for the past six years, has been feeding the neighbourhood cats with perfect regularity and kindness. She has done nothing malicious. She has simply, without knowing it, set up the best rat restaurant in the district.

This is the most misunderstood subject in urban pest prevention, because it pits two equally legitimate things against each other: care for living creatures, and collective public health. So we will try to be precise, without moralising.

Stack of white towels and flowers placed on a bed with a white pillow in a bedroom

Why feeding changes everything in a colony's dynamics

The limiting factor for the urban rat is not space, it is a stable food supply

A brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) eats between 25 and 30 grams of dry matter a day, plus 30 to 60 ml of water. That is not much. In the city, the difficulty is not finding 30 grams once — bins provide that — but finding 30 grams every single day, in the same place, without risk.

Resources from waste are erratic: they depend on collection days, on how full the bins are, on the weather. They produce unstable populations that fluctuate and disperse. A deliberate feeding point, by contrast — a bird feeder, a bowl of kibble, bread thrown out for pigeons — has three characteristics that nothing else in an urban environment combines:

• regularity: same time, same place, often for years on end;
• energy density: cat kibble runs at 350 to 400 kcal/100 g, sunflower seeds reach 580 kcal/100 g. That is three to six times the density of wet household waste;
• accessibility at ground level: whatever falls stays, and whatever stays is eaten at night.

The measurable result: around a permanent feeding point, rodent density is commonly 5 to 10 times higher than what is observed 100 metres away. This is not a field hunch, it is a classic finding in the urban ecology literature, and it is the reason most municipal health services begin their investigations with this question.

The demographic effect: winter survival

The most important point is seasonal, and that is why we are publishing this article in early September.

A female brown rat can produce 5 to 7 litters a year, of 6 to 12 young each. In theory, a single pair produces several hundred descendants annually. In practice, winter mortality brutally trims the population: in December and January, with no reliable resource, that year's young die en masse, females stop breeding, and the colony contracts.

A feeding point maintained all year round removes that trimming effect. The colony enters spring with its numbers intact and starts its breeding season from a base three to four times larger. This is exactly what we observe in buildings where feeding has been going on for several years: the problem is never seasonal there, it is permanent and growing.

An infestation with no winter lull is, in nine cases out of ten, an infestation that is being deliberately fed — even when no resident is aware of it.

What French regulations actually say

This is where many condominium disputes turn nasty for lack of accurate information. Three very different situations need to be distinguished.

Feeding stray animals and birds: the RSD

The main framework is the Règlement sanitaire départemental (RSD, the departmental sanitary regulation), issued by prefectoral order in each department on the basis of the model RSD. Its article 120 essentially prohibits throwing or leaving seeds or food in any public place in order to attract stray, wild or feral animals, particularly cats and pigeons. It also targets owners, tenants or occupants of buildings where such food is left.

Two points that are systematically forgotten:

1. The ban is not moral in nature, it is sanitary: it targets food deposits liable to attract stray animals and encourage proliferation. The RSD also contains a general obligation to prevent the proliferation of insects and rodents (articles 119 to 121, depending on the department).
2. The penalty is real: a third-class fine, i.e. up to €450, which can be issued by the municipal or national police. In practice, fines remain rare and only follow several warnings.

Since each department has its own order, the numbering and wording may vary slightly. The applicable text can be consulted on your prefecture's or ARS website.

Free-roaming cats: a specific legal status, often overlooked

Contrary to popular belief, feeding stray cats is not automatically illegal. Article L211-27 of the French Rural and Maritime Fishing Code allows the mayor to have ownerless cats living in groups caught, neutered and identified, then released at the place where they were caught. These are the well-known chats libres (free-roaming cats). Their management is often covered by an agreement with an association (École du Chat, Fondation 30 Millions d'Amis, etc.), and feeding is then regulated: a designated spot, and identified people doing it.

So the difference between a formal free-roaming cat scheme and unregulated feeding is not the presence of bowls: it is the existence of a protocol — a set time, removal of leftovers, a defined site, effective neutering.

In a condominium: the building rules often prevail

The condominium rules may prohibit feeding animals in common areas, on balconies and at windows — and such a clause is perfectly valid. The general meeting may also vote a resolution to that effect under the article 24 majority. Where an established abnormal neighbourhood nuisance exists (rats attracted, mess, smells), civil case law regularly rules in favour of the owners' association.

Brown rat with grey fur eating seeds on a stone, long tail visible, blurred green background

The special case of the bird feeder

Feeding tits in winter is a practice encouraged by the Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (LPO), and we are not asking anyone to give it up. But the LPO itself sets out precise recommendations that almost nobody follows in full.

The problem is not the feeder, it is what falls from it

Songbirds sort their food. A goldfinch shells a sunflower seed and drops the husk plus part of the kernel; a sparrow scatters 20 to 40% of what it pecks at onto the ground. On a feeder topped up daily, that amounts to several dozen grams of seed on the ground every day — literally the full daily ration of one to two rats.

The four mistakes we come across most often:

In practical terms, a squirrel-proof hanging bird feeder, designed to tilt or close off its openings under any weight greater than a songbird's, solves a large part of the problem: what stops a squirrel also stops a black rat, an excellent climber. A seed-catching tray clipped underneath the feeder eliminates the fraction that falls — it is the most useful and least purchased accessory of all.

For storage, the rule is simple and applies to kibble as well: never a paper or plastic bag left on the ground. A metal airtight seed storage bin, or a rigid polypropylene one with a clip-on lid, resists gnawing, which no bag does. A mouse will chew through a 5 kg bag in one night and leave urine and droppings behind: the stock then has to be thrown away, not only contaminated for you but dangerous for the birds themselves (avian salmonellosis, trichomonosis).

The choice of seed matters

Cheap mixes contain a lot of wheat, oats and seeds of little value to songbirds: the birds reject them, and they end up on the ground. A mix based mainly on black sunflower seeds and unsalted peanuts is better eaten, so less is wasted. Net-free vegetable fat balls — plastic nets trap tits' feet and are advised against by the LPO — placed in a mesh dispenser also limit spillage.

The cat-feeding protocol that does not attract rodents

We work regularly with cat welfare associations, and a compromise does exist. It comes down to five rules, and it genuinely works.

1. A fixed time, during daylight. Cats eat by day, rats by night. Feeding in the morning and removing the food before nightfall eliminates 80% of the problem on its own.
2. Systematic removal of leftovers. No bowl left full "just in case". This is the rule nobody sticks to, and the one that decides everything.
3. No wet food left outside. Pâté also attracts flies and oriental cockroaches.
4. Feeding point away from buildings, more than 10 metres from façades, basement vents, bin rooms and dense hedges that serve as rodent travel corridors.
5. A washable surface. A concrete slab that can be cleaned, not soil or gravel where crumbs disappear and then ferment.

A microchip-activated cat food dispenser — originally designed to keep several cats in one household on separate diets — is an elegant solution when the group of free-roaming cats has been identified: it only opens for registered animals and stays hermetically closed the rest of the time. It is an investment, but in a building where the conflict has dragged on for years, it costs less than an annual rat-control campaign.

How to know whether your building is affected: five clues

Before accusing anyone, check. The signs of a feeding point being exploited by rodents are fairly distinctive:

• runways — trails 5 to 8 cm wide, with compacted soil and worn vegetation — converging on a single point from hedges or inspection chambers;
• blackish grease marks along low walls and thresholds, left by fur on repeatedly used routes;
• fresh droppings (shiny, soft) concentrated within a 5-metre radius of the bowls;
• activity at dusk rather than in the middle of the night, a sign of a dense population competing for the resource;
• burrows less than 15 metres away, often hidden under a hedge, a garden shed or a loose paving slab.

A rechargeable wide-beam torch and an inspection at 9 pm in September are enough to settle the debate in a single evening. That is what we do before proposing any treatment, and it saves a good many pointless baiting campaigns.

Treating without removing the source is pointless

This needs saying plainly, because it involves condominium money: baiting carried out near an active feeding point is very largely ineffective. Rats are neophobic — they are wary of anything new in their environment — and above all opportunistic: between an unfamiliar block of rodenticide bait and a pile of kibble they have been eating for two years, they never choose the bait.

On top of that comes a regulatory constraint. Following changes to the European biocides framework and the positions taken by ANSES on second-generation anticoagulants, rodenticide use is tightly regulated: secured bait stations are mandatory, along with traceability and, above all, an obligation to implement non-chemical preventive measures beforehand. In other words, removing food sources is not an optional nicety: it is a regulatory prerequisite for chemical control.

The risk of secondary poisoning is also real: cats, hedgehogs and nocturnal birds of prey eating poisoned rodents. From that point of view, feeding cats in a baited area is the worst possible set-up.

How to proceed in a condominium, without conflict

Experience shows that the head-on approach — a threatening letter, the threat of a fine — mainly produces resentment and clandestine feeding, which is worse. The sequence that works:

1. Document: dated photos of the feeding point and of the signs of activity, and if possible a report from the municipal hygiene and health service (SCHS), which is free in most large cities.
2. Inform rather than accuse: a clear notice explaining why ground-level feeding is a problem, with concrete alternatives. Most of the people concerned are simply unaware of the link with rats.
3. Offer a regulated solution: if free-roaming cats are present, contact the town hall about a neutering agreement under article L211-27. The number of cats will fall, and feeding will be organised.
4. Put a resolution on the general meeting agenda: a ban on feeding in common areas and on balconies, with, where appropriate, a regulated feeding point set away from the building.
5. Only then treat: rat control, sealing entry points, maintenance of the surroundings. In that order.

Key takeaways

Nobody should have to choose between loving animals and living in a rat-free building. The two are compatible, provided one simple idea is accepted: it is not the act of feeding that causes the problem, it is food left available at ground level, at night, all year round.

Feed the tits from November to March, up high, with a catch tray, and store your seed in a rigid container. Feed the free-roaming cats in the morning, on a washable slab, well away from façades, and take the bowls away before dusk. You will have kept everything that matters in your gesture, and removed all of its unwanted consequences.

If your building has an infestation that does not ease off in winter, that is the first place to look — long before the cellars and the drains. Our technicians carry out this food-source assessment as a matter of course, because a treatment that does not tackle it only pushes the problem back by a few weeks.