Caring for community cats, while working to stabilize and ultimately reduce their numbers, is one of the most complex issues facing animal shelters today. It’s one that leading animal welfare organizations, veterinarians and researchers have developed progressive solutions to address.
Spaying/neutering community cats and returning them outdoors is the only approach proven to reduce their population numbers over time.
- If cats are removed from their outdoor home, it creates a territorial opening—or vacuum—that will not remain empty.
- Removing cats from an area may cause a temporary decrease in the cat population, but more cats WILL take their place—and it won’t take long.
- This phenomenon is known in conservation studies as the Vacuum Effect. The Vacuum Effect has been observed in many species, not just cats.
- Catching and removing (or killing) cats is therefore futile. It is an expensive, deadly cycle which yields no long-term benefits.
- Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) is the only way to stabilize cat populations. It is the humane, effective approach to community cats and is sound public policy.
Read more about the Vacuum Effect at Alley Cat Allies
The Humane Society of Marlboro County’s Community Cat Program is a work in progress with a simple, clear goal in mind: to do what’s best for cats. We want to create the best, most compassionate outcome for every animal in Marlboro County. Our Community Cat Program accomplishes this by spaying/neutering, vaccinating and returning healthy community cats to their outdoor homes.
We are limited by resources such as spay/neuter surgery appointment availability and extra hands for transporting to and from appointments.
What is a community cat?
“Community cats” are free-roaming, outdoor cats with no verifiable signs of ownership. These cats are found all over the world. Community cats can be feral or friendly, young or old. Here in Marlboro County, they live in our downtown areas, farms, and backyards. You’ve no doubt seen cats all over the county.
Why aren’t traditional sheltering methods working for community cats?
The traditional shelter model was originally developed to care for dogs and livestock, and simply does not meet the unique needs of cats. As a result, shelters do not provide the best option for cats, and statistics demonstrate that: Nationally, cats admitted to shelters have only a 2% chance of being reunited with an owner, and a nearly 50% chance of being euthanized in a shelter.
In shelter environments, community cats who are accustomed to roaming miles each day are confined to small habitats in highly populated indoor spaces, which can lead to extreme stress and illness — which then results in significantly higher rates of death and euthanasia.
Additionally, despite the use of traditional sheltering methods and the work of many people and organizations dedicated to caring for animals, the volume of cats entering shelters continues to increase. In 2019, nearly 2.3 million cats entered shelters nationwide, up from 2.2 million the previous year.
It is important to note that cats live and thrive outdoors all over the world — in Africa, Asia, Australia, South America and beyond. In fact, North America is the only continent in which keeping indoor-only cats has become common practice. Even in the United States, keeping indoor cats as pets only became popular after 1947, with the invention of cat litter, and then became more commonplace in the 1970s when shelters advocated for keeping cats indoors in an effort to control population.
A New Solution: Comprehensive Community Cat Programs
The Humane Society of Marlboro County, and animal welfare organizations across South Carolina and the country, are creating comprehensive community cat programs to best meet the needs of individual cats while helping to reduce population over time. The focus of these programs is to do what’s best for community cats by spay/neutering, vaccinating and returning healthy community cats to their outdoor homes.
Supporters of these programs include a wide range of veterinarians, shelter experts and leading animal welfare organizations — including Alley Cat Allies, American Pets Alive, the ASPCA, Best Friends, the Humane Society of the United States, the Koret Shelter Medicine Program at the University of California, Davis, and Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida. In addition to being what’s best for individual cats, spaying/neutering community cats and returning them outdoors is the only approach proven to reduce their population numbers over time. While programs that care for community cats may have slight variations and go by different names, including Spay/Neuter Return (SNR), Trap/Neuter Return (TNR) or Return to Field (RTF), they are all focused on the same thing: ensuring the best outcomes for healthy, unowned, outdoor cats.
Community cats entering the program are spayed/neutered, vaccinated, have their left ear tipped and are quickly returned to their outdoor homes. This program only applies to healthy cats, and those with easily treatable conditions, who demonstrate they are doing well living outside. It does not apply to cats who are unhealthy, show signs of having been recently abandoned, were relinquished by their owners, or were found in a location that presented an immediate danger.