Community Cats
While cats as a whole face a roughly 45% chance of being killed in shelters, when those cats are “unsocial,” the percentage becomes nearly 100% at shelters without a sterilization and release program. Sterilization and release or Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) -- a core program of the No Kill Equation -- provide community cats who enter shelters a vital alternative to killing.
Despite being unsocial with humans, community cats (“feral cats”) who enter shelters are considered healthy. In order to achieve No Kill, a shelter or community must “zero out” deaths for these cats as well. For more information, click here.
Despite being unsocial with humans, community cats (“feral cats”) who enter shelters are considered healthy. In order to achieve No Kill, a shelter or community must “zero out” deaths for these cats as well. For more information, click here.
Articles
- Effect of high-impact targeted trap-neuter-return and adoption of community cats on cat intake to a shelter
- Simulating Free-Roaming Cat Population Management Options in Open Demographic Environments
- Study of the effect on shelter cat intakes and euthanasia from a shelter neuter return project
- An Embrace of SNR, With Caveats
- The Cat Hater's Great Hypocrisy
- The Life of a Wild Cat
Model Community Cat Law
The No Kill Advocacy Center has model legislation for community cats, banning tethering of dogs, and more. We're happy to send it to you if you contact us here. Also check out our other model laws here.
Community Cats - A Historical Timeline
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1976: The Humane Society of the United States, the ASPCA, the American Humane Association, the American Veterinary Medical Association and other “humane” organizations meet in Denver at a conference on “Dog and cat control.” Their report, copies of which were sent to shelters and health departments nationwide, embraces mass killing of community cats, community dogs, and other animals: “ownerless animals must be destroyed. it is as simple as that.”
Early 1990s: Following decades of successful programs in Europe, a small number of U.S. communities, such as San Francisco, begin sterilizing community cats as an alternative to impound and killing. 1992: HSUS promotes the extermination of community cats, calling mass slaughter in the nation’s shelters “the only practical and humane solution” and programs to sterilize them nothing more than “subsidized abandonment.” After asking rhetorically if HSUS would ever embrace sterilization in lieu of killing and if HSUS would cease promoting extermination, HSUS’ Vice-President for Companion Animals writes that the “answers to these questions are still, and will always be, the same: no, no, and absolutely not!” 1993: The Fund For Animals promotes legislation to criminalize outdoor cats in California and to empower animal control officers to kill cats in the field if they are not wearing proof of a rabies vaccine. locally, they embrace an ordinance to prohibit trapping community cats except “for proper disposal.” |
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1994: Calling sterilization of community cats “inhumane” and “abhorrent,” HSUS officials write a criminal prosecutor in Outer Banks, North Carolina, urging arrest and prosecution of cat caretakers for cruelty to animals. HSUS blames community cats “for traffic accidents, bites, spread of contagion, and enhanced municipal expenditures to retrieve them from public space.”
1995: American Humane Association hosts a “feral cat summit.” Dozens of local, statewide, and national animal protection groups from across the nation attend, with all but a few organizations embracing eradication programs.
1998: Over the objection of shelters and national groups such as HSUS, California passes legislation making it illegal for shelters to kill community cats if their caretakers come forward to reclaim them or if a rescue group offers to save them.
2001: Funded by the health department, the animal shelter in Tompkins County, New York, embraces a sterilization program for community cats. The deaths of community cats in the county’s shelter falls to zero, the first community in the nation to end their killing. Eventually, NYS health regulations would also embrace community cat sterilization, declaring it “to be the policy of New York State that every feasible humane means of reducing the production of unwanted puppies and kittens be encouraged.”
2004: HSUS, the ASPCA, AHA, and other humane organizations meet in Asilomar, California, to lay out a “vision” for the future of American sheltering. Ignoring over a decade of U.S. success, they classify healthy community cats as “untreatable” and demand that rescuers and caretakers stop criticizing shelters that kill them. Under the “Asilomar Accords,” community cats share the same category as animals who are irremediably suffering and the same fate: death.
Mid 2000s: Despite opposition from groups like HSUS, the practice of community cat sterilization becomes widespread, as municipal shelters and health departments across the country conclude that it furthers public and animal health, safety, and welfare.
2006: HSUS accuses cats of being a public rabies threat: “cats are now the most common domestic vectors of rabies;” of decimating wildlife: “free-roaming cats kill millions of wild animals each year;” of being invasive, non-native intruders: “cats are not a part of natural ecosystems, and their predation causes unnecessary suffering and death;” and, of causing neighborhood strife: “they also cause conflicts among neighbors.”
2007: A Harris poll finds that 81% of Americans support non-lethal community cat programs in lieu of killing.
2008: The town council of Randolph, Iowa, offers residents a cash bounty of five dollars for anyone who brings a community cat to the pound to be killed. When pressed for comment, HSUS states it “doesn’t have a problem with humanely euthanizing a stray cat.”
2012: An Associated Press national poll finds seven in 10 Americans think it should be illegal to kill cats (and dogs) who are not irremediably suffering.
2014: HSUS embraces community cat sterilization: “Programs that attempt to use lethal control to eliminate cat populations are inhumane, ineffective, and wasteful of scarce resources.”
2014: The International City/County Management Association, representing municipalities worldwide, embraces community cat sterilization.
2015: Shelters across the country embrace a “million cat challenge” to sterilize, rather than kill, one million community cats.
Today: Cities across the U.S. pass laws authorizing community cat sterilization and exempting both community cats and their caregivers from ownership, pet limit, anti-feeding, and leash laws.
1995: American Humane Association hosts a “feral cat summit.” Dozens of local, statewide, and national animal protection groups from across the nation attend, with all but a few organizations embracing eradication programs.
1998: Over the objection of shelters and national groups such as HSUS, California passes legislation making it illegal for shelters to kill community cats if their caretakers come forward to reclaim them or if a rescue group offers to save them.
2001: Funded by the health department, the animal shelter in Tompkins County, New York, embraces a sterilization program for community cats. The deaths of community cats in the county’s shelter falls to zero, the first community in the nation to end their killing. Eventually, NYS health regulations would also embrace community cat sterilization, declaring it “to be the policy of New York State that every feasible humane means of reducing the production of unwanted puppies and kittens be encouraged.”
2004: HSUS, the ASPCA, AHA, and other humane organizations meet in Asilomar, California, to lay out a “vision” for the future of American sheltering. Ignoring over a decade of U.S. success, they classify healthy community cats as “untreatable” and demand that rescuers and caretakers stop criticizing shelters that kill them. Under the “Asilomar Accords,” community cats share the same category as animals who are irremediably suffering and the same fate: death.
Mid 2000s: Despite opposition from groups like HSUS, the practice of community cat sterilization becomes widespread, as municipal shelters and health departments across the country conclude that it furthers public and animal health, safety, and welfare.
2006: HSUS accuses cats of being a public rabies threat: “cats are now the most common domestic vectors of rabies;” of decimating wildlife: “free-roaming cats kill millions of wild animals each year;” of being invasive, non-native intruders: “cats are not a part of natural ecosystems, and their predation causes unnecessary suffering and death;” and, of causing neighborhood strife: “they also cause conflicts among neighbors.”
2007: A Harris poll finds that 81% of Americans support non-lethal community cat programs in lieu of killing.
2008: The town council of Randolph, Iowa, offers residents a cash bounty of five dollars for anyone who brings a community cat to the pound to be killed. When pressed for comment, HSUS states it “doesn’t have a problem with humanely euthanizing a stray cat.”
2012: An Associated Press national poll finds seven in 10 Americans think it should be illegal to kill cats (and dogs) who are not irremediably suffering.
2014: HSUS embraces community cat sterilization: “Programs that attempt to use lethal control to eliminate cat populations are inhumane, ineffective, and wasteful of scarce resources.”
2014: The International City/County Management Association, representing municipalities worldwide, embraces community cat sterilization.
2015: Shelters across the country embrace a “million cat challenge” to sterilize, rather than kill, one million community cats.
Today: Cities across the U.S. pass laws authorizing community cat sterilization and exempting both community cats and their caregivers from ownership, pet limit, anti-feeding, and leash laws.
