TRAP/NEUTER/RETURN
TNR is the practice of trapping stray cats, getting them spayed/neutered and returning them to where they came from. For pricing, procedures and limitations to TNR at TLC, please click here or visit our TNR for Community Cats under Services/Pricing.
Community Cats
Some very exciting things are happening in your community. Montgomery and Harris Counties have joined a very progressive movement for change in the way our animal shelter handles animals. Texas Litter Control will be acting in a support capacity to end the killing of healthy cats in the Montgomery and Harris County Animal Shelters.
The Montgomery County Animal Shelter has been 4 times over capacity for many years. It has been faced with terrible disease outbreaks and euthanasia for space. Other communities have developed better programs to not only lower the shelter’s intake (and save on your tax dollars), but these programs help lower the cat population overall. When you first see this, you will do what every person does. Releasing cats??? How does that reduce the population? That’s just crazy! Let’s go through this step by step…
Cats are territorial animals. If you remove a cat, more cats will show up as long as a food source is available. It is what is known as the vacuum effect. The only thing that will lower the number of cats in a region is to fix them and put them back to their outdoor home. The fixed cats keep the unfixed cats out of the territory. Did you know that cats can have up to 4 litters of kittens a year??? There have been ongoing studies for years at several major universities that show the cat population actually goes down when you return spayed/neutered cats to an area.
So why am I telling you all of this? As we all know, many cats live happily outdoors and often time claim several families as their homes. Outdoor cats are fine as long as they aren’t delivering 4 litters of kittens a year and carrying on with those not so attractive mating behaviors like spraying, yowling and fighting.
Did you know it costs over $100 to house and kill a cat but it only costs $78 to fix, vaccinate it and release it? This is where Community Cats comes in. This program targets healthy outdoor cats. They may or may not be friendly. Friendly cats are friendly because they belong to someone. When a cat is brought into the shelter, it is evaluated. If the cat is healthy and has been living as an outdoor cat, the shelter staff will take down all of the information as to where the cat came from. Rather than the cat entering into the shelter, it is diverted to the spay/neuter clinic to be fixed and put back where it lives.
Sick cats, old cats, declawed cats, owner turn ins, and kittens under 4 months of age will not go into this program. Did you know that over thousands of cats are euthanized in shelters every year? This number is actually bigger because it does not count those who died from disease and it does not count all of the baby kittens coming in with moms. That is a whole lot of tax dollars for something that has been proven not to work.
Returning Community Cats to where they live frees up space for some of the older and harder to adopt kitties. The return to owner rate on cats for MCAS was 52 out of 7,151 cats last year in 2016. That is just .007%. These cats have a better chance of getting home on their own from the street than from the shelter. It also frees up much needed funding, resources, enrichment and staff time for other animals…like dogs!
Now, I will warn you, this is not a TLC original idea. The program has works in hundreds of cities across the country: Waco, TX; Jacksonville, FL; Indianapolis, IN; San Antonio, TX; Huntsville, AL to name a few… Did you know that San Antonio was number one in the entire nation for killing animals in their shelters just a few years ago? Now they are not even on the radar!
If you would like to donate toward Texas Litter Control’s efforts in your community, click here. We take both monetary donations and non-cash items like automobiles, stocks and property. Texas Litter Control is a Texas Non Profit Corporation and a 501c3 public charity. All donations are deductible to the full extent allowed by law.
If you have any questions about this program, feel free to contact us at 281-528-1238 or reggie@texaslittercontrol.org.