Community Cats: Friends or Foes?

It would seem that every couple months a major news outlet runs some sort of story decrying free roaming cats and Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) or other community cat programs – generally under the argument of wanting to protect birds or other wildlife from predation.? However, these stories all follow tired, overly simplistic storylines that paint native wildlife as victims and cats (and sometimes their advocates) as the villains and only serve to create discord and confusion.? We should be upset that birds and other small wildlife are dying.? Our natural world is changing rapidly before our eyes and grief, upset, a sense of loss, and other negative emotions are all valid responses.? However, valid emotions don’t automatically equate to valid positions and they certainly don’t create solutions.

Here’s a few things these arguments get very wrong.? Firstly, it is not the role of animal shelters to be the arbiters of who lives and who dies in communities.? Nor is this what communities want from their shelters in the first place.? Studies repeatedly demonstrate that people want shelters to be places that help animals.? For example, when told that intaking a healthy free roaming cat into a shelter would most likely result in that cat’s euthanasia, respondents overwhelmingly prefer TNR or doing nothing.? The public expects shelters to be places that work to save lives.

Secondly, widespread intake of cats into shelters (sometimes called “catch and kill”) hasn’t proven to be successful in reducing the numbers of free roaming cats.? There has been no place in this country where shelters intake and euthanize cats as a means of managing outdoor cats that has demonstrated a sustained reduction in population.? Attempts to eliminate free roaming cats are a waste of time and resources that, in the end, don’t help cats or birds.? In fact, from a mathematical standpoint, eliminating cats from the landscape is impossible.? Kate Hurley and Dr. Julie Levy in their thorough and well researched article “Rethinking the Animal Shelter’s Role in Free-Roaming Cat Management” published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science” in March 2022 make clear that, humane arguments aside, there are simply too many cats and not enough resources.? Citing additional studies, it’s estimated there are between 30-80 million free roaming cats in this country.? These estimates do not include owned indoor cats who are allowed some access to the outdoors, which means this number doesn’t include every cat who spends some time outdoors.? Multiple models estimate that at least 50% (and probably more) of cats need to be removed to achieve a sustained population reduction.? This would mean at least 15 million cats would need to be caught and killed.? National animal welfare groups estimate that about 4.4 million dogs and cats combined currently enter shelter systems.??

Let that sink in… Who can rationally make an argument that communities should use their limited resources to take in a collective 10.5 million more cats just to kill them?? Who would ask workers in a field already several times more likely to exhibit signs and symptoms of PTSD than the average person do this to healthy living creatures?? Why do news outlets give voice to anyone making these arguments that get no one closer to solutions?

Not only does no one win with these Manichean viewpoints, we don’t have to choose.? Bringing multiple viewpoints to these conversations and acknowledging validity of concerns, making spay/neuter and vaccinations more accessible, increasing community education, implementing targeted Trap-Neuter-Return programs and when, necessary, limited removal and relocation of cats in sensitive areas can help stabilize outdoor cat populations, keep birds and wildlife safer, protect limited shelter resources for animals most in need, and strengthen community relationships.? That sounds like a story worth telling.

Dr. Ellen Jefferson,

President & CEO