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11 years ago
All You Need to Know About Community Cats and How You Can Help Them
Chances are you’ve seen or heard outdoor cats and wondered who they belong to or how to help them. Some cats are pets who are allowed to roam outdoors by their guardians; others are community (feral and stray) cats who exist outdoors through no fault of their own. The good news is that you can make a big difference when it comes to helping community cats.
Ready, Set, Go!
If you’re out and about and are approached by a friendly unfamiliar cat, you may be tempted to pick him up and confine him in your bathroom or laundry room while you try to find his guardian. You may even think about taking him to the local animal shelter, but not so fast!
Although we’d like pet cats to be kept safely indoors, some guardians allow their cats to roam. These semi-outdoor cats may then become lost. With all the cats in shelters, for whom very few guardians come looking, we don’t want to separate cats from their homes. If a cat looks well cared for, they are more likely to return home without your help. If they do hang around, chat with your neighbors or post signs to see if you can find their family.
There are unowned stray cats who may also be friendly and approach you for food or attention. Some may be too scared to let you get close at first. These cats may be abandoned pet cats and not look well cared for if they’ve been on their own for a while.They may have never had a home but lived in a place, such as a community garden, where they were cared for by people. They will usually eat immediately if you offer them food. Feral cats are afraid of people and usually run if approached. They will not allow you to touch them and you shouldn’t try because it can endanger you or the cat. They’ll only eat food you’ve provided after you’ve moved away. A cat is probably feral if he’s still unapproachable after several days of feeding.
Give a Helping Hand
If you think a cat is lost, contact your local animal care and control agency, humane society or cat rescue group. The heartbroken guardian may have filed a lost cat report that is a match.
If you can safely get the cat into some sort of a secure carrier, you can take him to a veterinarian or animal shelter to be scanned for a microchip, which may then lead you to an guardian. If you’re unable to locate a guardian and the cat is healthy, it’s best to return him to his territory and try to find out if someone is feeding him. Many people feed community cats and some trap, neuter and return (TNR) them to reduce their numbers.
Find a group as soon as possible that does TNR to help you before you’re overwhelmed with kittens.
You can also help a local TNR organization by volunteering to be a cat caretaker or kitten foster home, building shelters, or advocating for community cats. Whatever your time, skills and interest allow, just do it!
Go Above and Beyond
If there’s no local group helping community cats, you can TNR the cats! You’ll find lots of great information to get the skills and confidence you need in the Neighborhood Cats TNR Handbook.
Once you’ve TNRed a colony of cats, you may want to start your own TNR program or try to convince your local shelter or animal care and control agency to adopt community cat-friendly policies. Perhaps your local ordinances don’t allow TNR or they contain language that makes it difficult for individuals to help cats.
You can advocate for community cats even if you’ve never done it before. There are lots of resources, such as The Humane Society of the United States’ Lobbying 101 for Cat Advocates, to help you be the most effective advocate possible. You can also check out “Managing Community Cats: A Guide for Municipal Leaders,” which can be purchased in print form or downloaded for free. Together, we can make a difference for these cats.
Please join the community cat army, speak up and do something!
Image source: Flikr/Flickr
Aww. Silly, foolish little tnr (supposed) researcher got offended by the \’coward\’ comment made by a complete stranger over the internet! Yet you have no problem dishing far more creative insults such as "sorry-aššed bible-home-schooled selves, moronic and phenomenally ignorant imbeciles JUST LIKE YOU, Toxoplasma gondii brain-damaged fools" just to name a few! Since you\’re so quick to make assumptions on everyone\’s education level among your other crazy ravings, I\’m going to go ahead and assume that you would probably never say some of the insulting things you\’ve said here to anyone\’s face in real life! Just like a … Dare I say…. Coward??? :) You\’d probably get your geeky little ass kicked!! So Easy to hide behind a computer screen isn\’t it! And since you\’re so passionate on this subject that you seem to be the only person who comes here every day, and posts numerous novel-comments full of hate and insults, why don\’t you take your opinion to a more important source? Ya know, instead of the comments section of an article on a \’green\’ site! Don\’t you realize that offending random people is not going to get them to agree with you here?! Don\’t you realize that your hateful extremist kind is just as loony as the crazy cat people?! Seems like you just enjoy arguing with strangers and it getting nowhere! And as far as your defense of \’Cats can and will wipe out whole ecosystems — animal and plant\’, why don\’t You look in the mirror! We do that too, everywhere we go! A trait both species share! Look it up, researcher! :)
Not offended in the least. I was merely correcting your sorry-assed mommy\’s-rental-basement-dwelling ignorance-is-bliss sorry-excuse for a self.
While it is true that overpopulation of humans is the #1 problem that we and all other species face today (humans are a classified as a "weedy species", but they ARE NOT an "invasive species", please educate your sorry-aššed bible-home-schooled selves); this still doesn\’t excuse all the responsible, wise, and intelligent people from stopping all the ecological disasters caused by those phenomenally stupid and criminally negligent people who should have never been born in the very first place. (You know, moronic and phenomenally ignorant imbeciles JUST LIKE YOU who don\’t even have clue-one on how the natural world works.)
Cats are a man-made (through selective breeding) invasive species. And as such, cats being a product of man, are no less of a man-made environmental disaster than any oil-spill, radiation-fallout, chemical-spill, or other environmental disaster _caused_by_man_. THESE MAN-MADE CATS ARE PURELY AN ACTIVITY OF HUMANS AND ARE THE #1 MAN-MADE CAUSE OF DESTRUCTION TO NATIVE WILDLIFE EVERYWHERE ON EARTH. Can\’t you Toxoplasma gondii brain-damaged fools get that through your heads yet? Cats are NOT exempt from being removed from every natural environment, wherever and whenever they are found away from supervised confinement. Just as you would destroy Burmese Pythons and African Cichlids in every habitat where they exist in N. America. They started out as pets too. Many of our destructive invasive species pests started out as PETS discarded by criminally-irresponsible humans. Guess what happens to all those other non-native pets that became destructive invasive species? They are destroyed on-site by any means possible — no questions asked — none required.
Cats are even worse than a multi-continent-sized oil-spill. They not only kill off rare marine-mammals along all coastlines; seals, otters, whales, manatees and river-otters (just as oil-spills do) from run-off from the land carrying cats\’ Toxoplasma gondii parasites, they also destroy the complete food-chain in every ecosystem where cats are found. From smallest of prey that is gutted and skinned alive, wasted for cats\’ tortured play-toys, up to the top predators — starved to death from cats destroying their ONLY foods. (Precisely what cats caused on my own lands not long ago.) They destroy everything that moves. They will even destroy native vegetation by destroying those animals that are pollinators or act as seed dispersers for those plants (as many rodent and bird species do) or those acting as plants\’ pest-control. Cats can and will wipe out whole ecosystems — animal and plant.
Cats need to disappear from all natural habitats PERMANENTLY, eventually, somehow. And the sooner the better. They are breeding out of control at an exponential rate. The reason for "sooner the better" is that you can only hope you can halt the problem before it is beyond the reach of any method you eventually choose. Luckily, I caught the problem in time where I live — by humanely shooting and burying every last cat I saw, hundreds, collared or not. (Collared strays are the very source of every last feral cat. If you don\’t destroy all stray collared cats too then you have done absolutely nothing to solve the problem.)
It seems nobody else is faring as well. Their time is being wasted by cat-lickers stopping them from doing the right thing. Asking or listening to any deranged invasive-species advocate for advice on how to clean up the ecological disaster that they created and are hellbent on perpetuating is about as useful as asking your local career thieves for their advice and help to hide your valuables from their daily motives and activities. Ignore anything they might say and you too will solve the problem where you live. People like that ARE the problem, they cannot be part of the solution. The very moment that cat-lickers, who cause the problem, are cut from the solution-equation it instantly solves itself.
It worked 100% where I live. I\’ve not seen even ONE cat for five years now after shooting and burying hundreds of these disease-invested invasive-species vermin. The eradication was that complete and effective. (Also totally disproving that cat-lickers\’ deceptive and manipulative "vacuum effect" lie and myth.) Everyone else has only to follow what worked where I live to prove it to themselves now. A centuries\’-old cat problem solved in only 2 seasons of their time. And if you are lucky enough to get ammo on a close-out sale, as I did (5,000 rounds of .22s for only $15), you too can accomplish all this at the "exorbitant cost" of only THREE CATS PER PENNY! 1/3rd-cent PER CAT! Total cost less than the price of a couple cups of coffee for a problem of hundreds of cats. Each cat vaccinated against ALL of their 3dozen+ deadly zoonotic diseases (for which some of the most deadly that cats spread don\’t even have vaccines against them and are therefor listed as bio-terrorism agents), each cat sterilized so they can no-longer reproduce, and each cat also given a permanent "loving furever home" (2-3 ft. under) so they can no longer destroy anymore of our valuable native wildlife. A TOTAL solution affordable to anyone, any size of community! With no further costs incurred by ANYONE EVER AGAIN.
If none of you let your disease-infested invasive-species vermin illegally roam free then none of that would happen, now would it. Your fault!
Either finally grow-up into respectable and responsible humans who actually care about their 100%-expendable pets, or keep getting your cats shot and poisoned to death. What will it be?
Love \’em or lose \’em!
Bottom line: If you don\’t want to take care of your cat in the manner that YOU see fit, then I guarantee you that I WILL take care of your cat in the manner that I see fit — ONE TIME. And it only takes one time. See one, shoot one, A.S.A.P. Simple as that. (I lost count after 500.)
YOUR CHOICE!
If your cat gets hurt or dies, NO MATTER HOW YOUR CAT GETS HURT OR DIES, that\’s ***YOUR*** ***FAULT***. Make NO mistake about that. And you can be charged with all laws that clearly define animal-neglect, animal-abandonment, and animal-endangerment — not to mention every last national and international invasive-species law and environmental-protection-act on earth.
Do you actually love your vermin? Or are you just using it as a highly expendable animal-sacrifice to manipulate everyone? I guess we\’ll find out when your piece-of-shîť vermin never comes home.
PSA: The time is now …. Half-Past Kill-Kitty O\’Clock …. do you know where your piece-of-shîť, disease-infested, invasive species, ecological disaster, vermin cat is? If not, grab a shovel and I\’ll show you where its new "loving furever-home" is now.
Oh, one other important thing:
I\’m not here to convince you nor anyone else of anything. You planet-destroying fools will NEVER change who are and what you are doing. I learned that lesson the hard way, at the loss of countless thousands of native animals on my lands that were tortured to death by your cats. 15 years of careful and considerate negotiations, education, and then eventually even threatening them with the law — NOTHING MATTERS TO CAT-LICKERS LIKE YOU, BUT YOURSELVES AND HOW YOU CAN USE YOUR 100%-DISPOSABLE CATS TO MANIPULATE EVERYONE, USING YOUR VERMIN CATS LIKE LITTLE ANIMAL-SACRIFICES TO GET YOUR WAY. (Even if only just for attention online because you are that desperate for attention from ANY human in your lives now. No humans want to be around you.)
Dance, mine little puppet, dance!
See, I only use any and all online cat-lickers as my little ignorant show-\’n-tell puppets now. To prove to everyone in the world, beyond any doubt left in the known universe, that no matter how much we try to educate, reason with, beg with, plead with, or argue with you (I tried those failed method for 15 years with all the cat-lickers where I live, I learned my lesson); that it will do absolutely NOTHING toward solving the worldwide ecological disaster that YOU created and are hellbent on perpetuating with your vermin piece-of-shîť cats. The ONLY thing that works is ignoring every last thing that you cat-licking morons spew to others, and then giving back to you the EXACT SAME amount of respect and consideration as you have shown and given to ALL other life on earth — ABSOLUTELY NONE.
We just destroy every last one of your free-roaming cats. Then and only then will the problem that YOU created be solved. 15 years of non-productive arguing with cat-lickers, or 2 seasons of shooting and burying cats — the latter actually works. How much is an hour of your life worth to you and where will you spend it to solve the problem the most? People (and I use that word generously) like you ARE the problem, you cannot be ANY part of the solution. The very moment that cat-lickers like you, who cause the problem, are cut from the solution-equation it instantly solves itself.
You only use your cats like little animal sacrifices to try to control and manipulate everyone in the world around you (even just for trolling for attention online). You manipulative and inhumane cat-licking freaks don\’t give one shîť how any cat dies or you wouldn\’t let your vermin roam free in the very first place. This is why you don\’t give one damn if your cats get ran over by cars, attacked by other cats or animals, or die any other way. And if VERY VERY LUCKY your free-roaming cat will be humanely shot-to-death — for that is by-far the MOST humane death that any of your stray cats will ever hope to have.
This really isn\’t about cats at all. You only use your cats to try to control and ruin everyone else\’s lives on the planet, animal and human — most commonly because you hate everyone and everyone in the world has rejected you. Little self-victimization control-freaks, nothing more than that. Sociopaths and psychopaths to your very cores.
Once your furry little tools to manipulate everyone are no-more, you don\’t have even 1 of 4 legs to stand on — about anything. Nothing to complain about. Nothing to manipulate others with anymore.
GAME OVER!
Oh, and to address your inane comment about my not being able to say anything I type online to a person\’s face? Ask all the cat-licking neighbors whose hundreds of cats were shot dead and buried what I told them to their faces during the last year of 15-years of "negotiations" with them. LOL
I finally warned all my neighbors that ALL their cats were going to be shot to death if they didn\’t stop letting them kill all the wildlife on my lands. Then when I finally brought out my rifle to let them know I wasn\’t warning anymore, I was doing; a few of them called the sheriff. THAT was going to stop me! When he arrived the sheriff told me, right in front of them, that I should just start shooting their cats and don\’t stop until every last one of their cats on my lands was permanently gone — that I have every last legal-right in the world to do so. Then he just walked away. That shut them up.
You should have seen the looks on their faces! ROFLMAO! Priceless! But more importantly, actually shooting every last one of hundreds of their cats finally shut them up — permanently. What was even more strange about you pathetic sociopathic cat-lickers; as I was shooting all their cats over a 2-season period of time, they adopted even MORE cats to let roam free for me to shoot. Even as they wandered up and down the roads every evening calling out the names of their favorite ones that they already knew had been shot to death. Talk about brain-damaged imbeciles. This is why it took a full 2 seasons. Yes, you cat-lickers are just this phenomenally stupid, disrespectful to ALL life, and CLINICALLY INSANE. Are YOU going to be that phenomenally stupid and insane? They lost HUNDREDS of cats, how many will you and all your cat-licking friends have to lose permanently before you learn your much-deserved well-earned lessons at long last? I\’ve not heard even one peep out of these criminally negligent cat-licking cretins ever since I started shooting their cats and destroyed every last one of hundreds of their cats FIVE YEARS AGO. So many problems solved! Not only their cats, but them too — they all finally became respectable people for once in their terminally useless lives. If that\’s what it\’ll take to turn you into one too, then I say "Bye-Bye Kitty! BANG! BANG!"
Wow I see a lot of butthurt comments about cats destroying wildlife. Yet did you know that the biggest contributor to habitat destruction is… Wait for it… ***HUMANS***!!! The reason feral cats have become a problem is because irresponsible pet owners – yes, PEOPLE! Like you and me! – have these animals and don\’t get them fixed, resulting in them breeding and creating colonies! Yep, people have allowed this problem to get out of control! House pets need to be fixed. In other countries (and probably even in some parts of the US) they have problems with feral dogs the same way we do with cats (yep, its not Just cats everyone)! Some lunatics even feed vultures until their street is full of them, creating another animal nuisance! It all comes back to people screwing shit up and blaming something/someone/everything else! It\’s all we\’re good at! It sounds like the angry anti-cat commenters are in denial that this problem was created by their own species, and looking for an excuse to kill something that they won\’t have to do time for. Just like a good proper coward does! :) You want to know how to solve the real problem though? Since you cat-haters are so tough and eager to kill, why not grow some balls and start with the source – irresponsible pet owners!
While it is true that overpopulation of humans is the #1 problem that we and all other species face today (humans are a classified as a "weedy species", but they ARE NOT an "invasive species", please educate your sorry-aššed bible-home-schooled selves); this still doesn\’t excuse all the responsible, wise, and intelligent people from stopping all the ecological disasters caused by those phenomenally stupid and criminally negligent people who should have never been born in the very first place. (You know, moronic and phenomenally ignorant imbeciles JUST LIKE YOU who don\’t even have clue-one on how the natural world works.)
Cats are a man-made (through selective breeding) invasive species. And as such, cats being a product of man, are no less of a man-made environmental disaster than any oil-spill, radiation-fallout, chemical-spill, or other environmental disaster _caused_by_man_. THESE MAN-MADE CATS ARE PURELY AN ACTIVITY OF HUMANS AND ARE THE #1 MAN-MADE CAUSE OF DESTRUCTION TO NATIVE WILDLIFE EVERYWHERE ON EARTH. Can\’t you Toxoplasma gondii brain-damaged fools get that through your heads yet? Cats are NOT exempt from being removed from every natural environment, wherever and whenever they are found away from supervised confinement. Just as you would destroy Burmese Pythons and African Cichlids in every habitat where they exist in N. America. They started out as pets too. Many of our destructive invasive species pests started out as PETS discarded by criminally-irresponsible humans. Guess what happens to all those other non-native pets that became destructive invasive species? They are destroyed on-site by any means possible — no questions asked — none required.
Cats are even worse than a multi-continent-sized oil-spill. They not only kill off rare marine-mammals along all coastlines (just as oil-spills do) from run-off from the land carrying cats\’ Toxoplasma gondii parasites, they also destroy the complete food-chain in every ecosystem where cats are found. From smallest of prey that is gutted and skinned alive, wasted for cats\’ tortured play-toys, up to the top predators — starved to death from cats destroying their ONLY foods. (Precisely what cats caused on my own lands not long ago.) They destroy everything that moves. They will even destroy native vegetation by destroying those animals that are pollinators or act as seed dispersers for those plants (as many rodent and bird species do) or those acting as plants\’ pest-control. Cats can and will wipe out whole ecosystems — animal and plant.
Cats need to disappear from all natural habitats PERMANENTLY, eventually, somehow. And the sooner the better. They are breeding out of control at an exponential rate. The reason for "sooner the better" is that you can only hope you can halt the problem before it is beyond the reach of any method you eventually choose. Luckily, I caught the problem in time where I live — by humanely shooting and burying every last cat I saw, hundreds, collared or not. (Collared strays are the very source of every last feral cat. If you don\’t destroy all stray collared cats too then you have done absolutely nothing to solve the problem.)
It seems nobody else is faring as well. Their time is being wasted by cat-lickers stopping them from doing the right thing. Asking or listening to any deranged invasive-species advocate for advice on how to clean up the ecological disaster that they created and are hellbent on perpetuating is about as useful as asking your local career thieves for their advice and help to hide your valuables from their daily motives and activities. Ignore anything they might say and you too will solve the problem where you live. People like that the problem, they cannot be part of the solution. The very moment that cat-lickers, who cause the problem, are cut from the solution-equation it instantly solves itself.
It worked 100% where I live. I\’ve not seen even ONE cat for five years now after shooting and burying hundreds of these disease-invested invasive-species vermin. The eradication was that complete and effective. (Also totally disproving that cat-lickers\’ deceptive and manipulative "vacuum effect" lie and myth.) Everyone else has only to follow what worked where I live to prove it to themselves now. A centuries\’-old cat problem solved in only 2 seasons of their time. And if you are lucky enough to get ammo on a close-out sale, as I did (5,000 rounds of .22s for only $15), you too can accomplish all this at the "exorbitant cost" of only THREE CATS PER PENNY! 1/3rd-cent PER CAT! Total cost less than the price of a couple cups of coffee for a problem of hundreds of cats. Each cat vaccinated against ALL of their 3dozen+ deadly zoonotic diseases (for which some of the most deadly that cats spread don\’t even have vaccines against them and are therefor listed as bio-terrorism agents), each cat sterilized so they can no-longer reproduce, and each cat also given a permanent "loving furever home" (2-3 ft. under) so they can no longer destroy anymore of our valuable native wildlife. A TOTAL solution affordable to anyone, any size of community! With no further costs incurred by ANYONE EVER AGAIN.
If none of you let your disease-infested invasive-species vermin illegally roam free then none of that would happen, now would it. Your fault!
Either finally grow-up into respectable and responsible humans who actually care about their 100%-expendable pets, or keep getting your cats shot and poisoned to death. What will it be?
Love \’em or lose \’em!
Bottom line: If you don\’t want to take care of your cat in the manner that YOU see fit, then I guarantee you that I WILL take care of your cat in the manner that I see fit — ONE TIME. And it only takes one time. See one, shoot one, A.S.A.P. Simple as that. (I lost count after 500.)
YOUR CHOICE!
If your cat gets hurt or dies, NO MATTER HOW YOUR CAT GETS HURT OR DIES, that\’s ***YOUR*** ***FAULT***. Make NO mistake about that. And you can be charged with all laws that clearly define animal-neglect, animal-abandonment, and animal-endangerment — not to mention every last national and international invasive-species law and environmental-protection-act on earth.
Do you actually love your vermin? Or are you just using it as a highly expendable animal-sacrifice to manipulate everyone? I guess we\’ll find out when your piece-of-shîť vermin never comes home.
PSA: The time is now …. Half-Past Kill-Kitty O\’Clock …. do you know where your piece-of-shîť, disease-infested, invasive species, ecological disaster, vermin cat is? If not, grab a shovel and I\’ll show you where its new "loving furever-home" is now.
And as for your moronic comment about who is and is not a "coward" ….
The true coward is the person who is so spineless and heartless that they don\’t even have the strength of heart to destroy an unwanted cat. Instead, they throw it out into the streets, hoping like hell that they\’ll never have to see how their cat heinously suffered to death due to their own lack of values and criminally-irresponsible behaviors. As well as all the thousands of native animals that your cat tortures to death for its play-toys.
If you want to see a true animal-torturing coward, you need look no further than your nearest mirror.
Well it seems that these holier than thou cat morons didn\’t read about the shelter worker who was scratched on the neck by a vermin cat & is now fighting for her life due to a severe infection caused by the vermin cats claws. Oh but of course kitties can do no wrong, well I say "DEATH TO ALL CATS & KITTENS TOO!!!!!"
Here\’s a quick and simple eye-opener for these self-deceptive and sociopathic cat-lickers who wish that all humans would die instead of their diseased vermin invasive-species cats. And this is just for ONE of their cats 3dozen+ deadly zoonotic diseases they are spreading to all humans today. (Many of which are even listed as bio-terrorism agents because there are no vaccines available for them, like Tularemia and "The Black Death" the plague, being spread by people\’s cats this time around.)
Just copy and paste this search-string into Google, exactly as-is: (cat OR cats) (attack OR attacks OR attacked) (rabies OR rabid)
You get approximately 782,000 hits.
Thanks to these criminal cat-lickers and their free-roaming cats you are FOUR TIMES MORE LIKELY TO CONTRACT RABIES FROM *ANY* CAT THAN *ANY* OTHER DOMESTICATED ANIMAL TODAY.
This is why even the CDC has issued warnings to cease and desist with these illegal and FAILED TNR practices and programs, anywhere and everywhere. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/zph.12070/abstract
If you add in their multimillion-dollar money-making scam by exploiting all the animals they torture to death with TNR and then parade suffering animals in the media for donations to their bank-accounts, and how they use cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying tactics to get TNR programs into all the communities where it exists today; you even gotchyerself a good ol\’ case of "Racketeering". They\’re just ripe for picking by The Feds now. I hope they ALL rot in prison — FOR LIFE!