Cat catchers: South Middleton fights feral cat problem with vouchers
South Middleton Township will pay to get stray cats fixed. People just have to catch them first.
To control its feral cat population, the township is the latest local municipality to turn to incentivizing residents to tackle the problem via TNR, which stands for "trap, neuter and return."
"We felt that this is a great and humane way to deal with a real public health and safety issue while at the same time reducing unnecessary suffering by cats in the community, particularly with winter coming up," township manager Cory Adams told The Sentinel.
South Middleton Community Cats has been organizing volunteers, and held its first seminar last month where interested residents learned how to participate. The Nobody's Cats Foundation , a spay/neuter clinic in Camp Hill, led the seminar and will do the surgeries.
The South Middleton organization was started by a resident named Sue, who says it's in the process of becoming a 501(c)(3), which will make donations tax deductible.
She contacted Adams last year, and he was quickly on board because other residents and Nobody's Cats had already reached out about feral cats in the township.
"It was one of those things where, when you sit around and you think, like, 'Why doesn't somebody do something about this?'" she said, "then you realize you are 'somebody.'"
Sue did not want The Sentinel to use her last name because she doesn't want people to send her unwanted pets. Her organization's mission is solely TNR – not foster or adopt out – and she can't take in any animals amid the crunch on local shelters .
"If I were to get a box of kittens on my doorstep, they have to go to the shelter for euthanasia," she said. "There is no place for them."
Volunteers who were trained in August will be dispatched in mid-October to tackle the first of four or five colonies of stray cats Community Cats has its eyes on right now, Sue said. October was the earliest Nobody's Cats had open appointments.
Founded in 2012, Nobody's Cats clinics run four days a week and see roughly 40-60 cats daily, said founder and managing director Christine Arnold. Next week will see the organization's 54,000th surgery.
TNR can be done year-round, but starting in autumn means cats will be fixed before breeding season starts in spring.
"You hope you can grab them all before kitten season actually happens," Sue said, "because if they're all fixed by the time spring comes around, then that's the best-case scenario."
Cats evolved roughly 10,000 years ago to live in proximity to humans, Arnold explained, because they make suitable companions and rodent killers.
The animals group near food sources and shelter, especially in neighborhoods, by workplaces and by farms. When people who feed outdoor cats don't get them fixed, populations can explode.
The typical female cat in the 15-county, central Pennsylvania area that Nobody's Cats serves will have two litters of four to six kittens each during breeding season, Arnold said.
Female kittens can then start breeding at just three to four months old. Populations start small, Arnold said, but can quickly "expand exponentially" if not spayed or neutered.
Trap-neuter-return is thus a "humane and sustainable strategy" to manage the cat colonies, she said. It can range from a couple to about a dozen.
"Instead of rounding them up and killing them every year for a lot of money, it makes more sense to prevent them all from being born in the first place," Arnold said.
South Middleton Township volunteers will establish a routine of feeding target cats once a day, Sue said, so the cats come to expect food at a certain time. One day, food will be in the trap, volunteers will close the traps with the cats in them.
Volunteers will take the trapped cats – along with vouchers from South Middleton Township – to Nobody's Cats for the scheduled procedures.
After being spayed or neutered, cats will be monitored by Community Cats volunteers for 24-48 hours and then returned to their colonies.
"Cats live to hunt, eat, sleep and procreate," Sue said. "That's literally their jobs, and you need to just stop that cycle where it starts."
The vouchers are worth $40, which is what Nobody's Cats charges for a spay or neuter. Nobody's Cats will invoice South Middleton per each voucher. Nobody's Cats also has relationships with 15 municipalities, Arnold said, including Silver Spring Township and Middletown.
The cost of the TNR program will depend on how many cats are collected, Adams said. South Middleton Township's animal welfare services budget is $5,000, which covers the TNR program and an existing contract with the Humane Society of Harrisburg Area to take in cats.
TNR, however, should be "much more effective than a remove-and-adopt-out program," Adams said.
"It's been shown that a TNR program can actually help stabilize and reduce the feral cat population in a community."
Returning is a key part of TNR. Although the colony stays intact, it doesn't grow. If the cats were relocated, they wouldn't know their surroundings and could die. They also aren't in a physical or emotional state to be adopted.
New colonies, furthermore, aren't forming if a fixed cat leaves its colony.
The vouchers allow the township to track the number of cats that go through the TNR program, which will help officials quantitatively test the success of this first run, Adams said.
He expects the township to report on the results of the program next summer, and it may expand in the future so other community groups can grab cats.
Enterprise Reporter
