Programs
TRAP/NEUTER/RELEASE PROGRAM
Consider this statistic: one female cat and her offspring could produce 420,000 kittens in seven years. Of those kittens, only one in five stay in their original home for their lifetime. The remaining four are abandoned, dumped or end up at a shelter.
Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) Programs are universally recognized as the humane way of controlling feral cat colonies. TNR involves trapping all of the cats in a colony, spaying and neutering them, adopting out the kittens and friendly cats, releasing the less friendly adults back into their "community" or colony, and then providing them with food and shelter.
TNR is humane because spaying and neutering ensures longer and healthier lives for the cats and decreases behavioral problems, like roaming males and howling females in heat. Generally, cats will stay close to their food source, stay off the streets, and help keep the rodent population under control.
If you would like to be part of the solution in controlling stray cats in your community, the Cashiers-Highlands Humane Society can help. We can loan you a humane trap, provide kibble from our Food Bank, and organize spaying and neutering with our spay/neuter coupons. We can also take in the friendly cats and kittens for adoption, depending on space availability.
