Are your local community cat programs based on data, or habit? Do you know what proportions of your outdoor cats need to be spayed or neutered to stabilize or reduce the population humanely? By using the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program’s shelter and outdoor cat population calculator, you can generate a chart that will help you find out — and, if necessary, improve.

Before using the calculator, obtain the approximate human population of your community using U.S. census data, as well as intake and outcome data for the shelters that serve the community.

The calculator will walk you through the rest.

Try it out here!