The Department of Parks and Recreation treats cat colonies as debris, hauling away shelters and feeding stations when they are discovered on city park land. However, TNR is not universally embraced across city departments. The volunteers, visibly frustrated, shot back: Where are we supposed to take the cats? The neighbor suggested putting them to sleep.Īlley Cagnazzi, community cat coordinator for the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Team, holds a kitten born to a feral cat. People bring them food, then they live there and are permanent.” I’ve seen so many colonies of cats - by Walmart, up in the Northeast. “People love cats, and they’re not going to stop. “You want to know why there are rats? People leave cans of food,” said the neighbor, who did not give his name.
“Cities have rats.”Ī few doors down another neighbor chimed in with a completely different outlook: Trap the cats, take them away, but don’t bring them back here. “If you haven’t noticed, this is a city,” yelled Moody. He likes having a colony of feral cats behind his house to keep down the rodents - and he doesn’t want the felines neutered. “Please go, and take these awful traps!” said Sean Moody, a resident who says he sometimes feeds the cats. The vacant lot at 24th and Washington abuts the backyards of a block of rowhomes and, while the volunteers were setting traps, angry voices sounded over the fence. One of the challenges of managing cat colonies is encountering neighbors. “The more TNR you do, the more it’s contained.”įeral cats recover from neutering surgery in cages at the Philly Animal Care and Control facility. We’re trying to contain it,” said Lauder. “This is an almost out of control colony. While it does not feed and maintain this particular colony, it got a tip from nearby residents that it’s time for TNR. The Stray Cat Relief Fund makes these kinds of efforts all over the city. “ACCT will perform the surgeries over the next few days, we will come pick up the cat when they are ready, and we release them.” “So what we do is take every cat that we’ve trapped, take them to ACCT,” said Kelsey Lauder of the relief fund. Those that are behaviorally adoptable are sent to foster homes. (Peter Crimmins/WHYY)Ī group of volunteers with the Stray Cat Relief Fund came on a recent Saturday morning on a TNR mission: to trap, neuter, and release as many cats as possible back into their colonies. Volunteers from the Stray Cat Relief Fund gather at a colony at 24th and Washington streets with their traps. Tucked into the overgrown weeds in a corner of the large empty lot are six blue storage tubs, each with a hole cut in the side and little door flap for makeshift shelters.
One of those lots is at 24th and Washington in South Philadelphia. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor
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