Trap, Neuter, Return Resources
Feral and free-roaming cats are everywhere and can be found throughout our community. Despite the fact that some people loathe cats, a large percentage of the population will assist these animals whenever necessary. Their unchecked reproduction has created a significant burden in terms of quality of life for these cats.
The impact of the feral and stray cat population goes beyond quality of life issues and reaches far into the cost and effectiveness of our community’s animal control system. The unneutered street cat population serves as a constant source of new cats and kittens. Many of these animals find their way into local shelters, taking up badly needed space, making it more difficult to adopt out cats already rescued and contributing to a financial burden of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the cost of
euthanizing cats.
To date, the official policy for dealing with feral cats has been a mixture of “trap-and-kill” - so named because ferals are unadoptable and invariably end up being euthanized when captured - and doing nothing. Both approaches have failed and will continue to fail if further pursued.
Currently, our city has not adopted a policy of TNR and euthanizes community cats because they not considered adoptable. We spend thousands of taxpayers dollars yearly killing cats. The good news is we have permission to practice TNR, and you can make a difference in your neighborhood and a difference in the lives of our community cats.
Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Return, and Maintain – commonly referred to as TNR is the only
non-lethal way, at this time, to reduce the population of feral-neighborhood cats. TNR, is being embraced by towns and municipalities all across the nation. The ASPCA, the HSUS, and Alley Cat Allies support Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) as the most humane and effective strategy for managing the feral cat population."
Critter Shack Rescue is committed to our community cats and committed to reducing and stabilizing healthy cat populations in our community through TNR.
Critter Shack volunteers help to educate, to offer assistance with trapping, transporting to vets’ offices, to loan traps, and provide help in many, many ways.
Please contact us if you are interested in starting a TNR program of Community Cats in your neighborhood.
As a community, we will solve this problem only when everyone is on board including our city. It is time to focus on expanding TNR in San Angelo. That means the City adopting TNR as an official strategy to deal with our cat situation.
Benefits of TNR
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Reduces shelter admissions and euthanasia rates
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Improves public health
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Provides access to grant funding and volunteer participation
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Decreases nuisance complaints
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Green solution to rodent control
Resources
Trapping Guidelines
Videos:
1. A comprehensive view of TNR as the only effective strategy
Why do they have a tipped ear?
Ear-tipping is an effective and universally accepted method to identify a spayed or neutered and vaccinated community cat. This is done while the cat is anesthetized for spay/neuter and healing is rapid.
The ear tip helps the community quickly identify that the cat is sterilized (cannot reproduce). It is difficult to get close to feral cats, and therefore the identification must be visible from a distance. Community cats may interact with a variety of caregivers, veterinarians, and animal control personnel during their lives and so immediate visual identification is necessary to prevent an unnecessary second trapping and surgery
Why Trap and Remove DOESN'T Work
Relocation should ALWAYS be a last resort. Trapping and removing cats from a given area does little more than ensure that the cat population will rebound to its original level.
While lethal control may rid an area of cats temporarily, it is not an effective or humane long-term solution because new cats will quickly fill the vacated area and breed, resulting in a perpetual cycle of killing. This is known as the vacuum effect.
Barn Cats
Critter Shack Rescue has a barn cat program for those interested in hiring a working cat for green rodent control for your barn, farm, ranch or warehouse. If you are interested, please contact us.