Feral cats are an everyday part of life in many places. Outdoor cats live anywhere they can survive, and it’s likely that everyone has seen a stray at one point in their life. Many people don’t know, however, that feral cats don’t just live by themselves. They often live in colonies where they can provide for one another. The main problem within a cat colony is the fact that every year, more and more kittens will be born, and the population will grow to where it can’t sustain itself. Think about how many outdoor cats you have ever seen, then think about each of those cats having around three to five kittens a year, and then those kittens growing up and having litters of their own the next year. That’s a lot of cats after only two years. This cycle continues every year in many places, and it has become an obvious problem due to both a lack of resources and the mortality rate of young kittens.
Fig. 1 Feral Cat in Humane Trap
The solution to this is simple: a program called Trap-Neuter-Return, or T.N.R. In this program, people or shelters catch feral cats, have them neutered and spayed so they can’t have any more kittens, and then return them back to the colonies in which they were found. This is incredibly important because many kittens born on the street end up not surviving, and the ones that do survive live to have kittens of their own, creating an endless cycle, but T.N.R. can break this cycle by ensuring that no more kittens are born into such an unforgiving environment. T.N.R. also improves the feral cats’ relationships with the humans near them, as neutering and spaying can make the cats healthier and can reduce the nuisance behaviors that oftentimes lead to them being taken away, such as territorial fighting and yowling.
I first learned about this program online, through both the Youtube channels of Kitten Lady, who I mentioned in my last post, and Cat Man Chris. Cat Man Chris (Chris Poole) does a lot of work with rescues of feral kittens and T.N.R. Many of his videos are about the many rescues he has performed over the years, but he also has fun making funny videos about his cats on the channel Cole and Marmalade. Kitten Lady Hannah Shaw also constantly reiterates the importance of T.N.R., as that program can reduce the number of kittens born on the street and needing to be placed in foster care.
As I have mentioned before in previous blogs, I volunteered at an animal shelter for quite some time, and a feral cat colony was living behind the shelter. I saw up close how fearful these cats were of humans and how dedicated the staff were to caring for them. Since these cats had already been neutered and spayed, there were no issues with kittens being born in this colony, but kittens constantly entered the shelter from other stray cats and feral colonies. These kittens could’ve been saved from having to suffer until they got to the shelter if people had known about the T.N.R. program before the kittens were born.
Many dedicated people across the world care for feral cat colonies, and if more people knew about T.N.R, then more cats can be saved from having to suffer on the streets in the future.