As growing numbers of animal control shelters radically change how they handle cats, some advocates are concerned that there may be a negative impact on nearby shelters that see an increase in their intake due to these changes.
The impetus for change is clear: Cats taken into shelters become stressed and often ill, and the majority of them do not leave most shelters alive. Additionally, return rates to their owners are dismally low — so low that the cat has a statistically far greater chance to be reunited with his family outside the shelter than inside.
For that reason, many experts in the field are now advocating that animal control agencies simply neuter, vaccinate, and ear-tip healthy adult community cats that are brought to the shelter, and then return them to where they were found.This program is known as shelter-neuter-return, or SNR.
If they're friendly pets, they'll be much more likely to find their way home than if they're kept in the shelter. If they're unsocialized cats, their status as healthy means they're thriving where they are, and will be better off there than being killed in a shelter. Additionally, they'll now be neutered and vaccinated, which will benefit their health and that of cats they come in contact with, improve public safety, and help reduce or stabilize the number of cats in their area.
Some cat advocates, however, have expressed concern that these returned cats, combined with the knowledge in the community that the shelter will no longer house and kill stray cats, may drive up intake of cats in nearby shelters.
At a recent Maddie's InstituteSM webcast, the nation's
leading experts on animal sheltering and community cats took part in a
comprehensive Q&A panel discussion on SNR. One of the panelists was Jon Cicirelli, Deputy Director of San Jose Animal Care & Services in Santa Clara County, Calif. He was asked whether he'd seen an increase in cat intake in the shelters near his when they implemented a SNR program.
He responded that no, that didn't happen in Santa Clara County:
We are one of five shelters in our county. You can see overall intake for all of us is going down. Nobody had reported increases in cat intake.
Partly, of course, that is due to the fact that they also started doing the program (after seeing its results in San Jose). But, also, there is not this movement of cats from community-to-community, at least not that we are able to measure.
[…]
Dr. Hurley … shared with me a small organization in Central Pennsylvania who started a similar program in 2010 for community cats with one of their cities. They quickly ran out of cats to take care of, or have in the program, because it was reducing the intake of cats. They were taking care of all the feral cats. They had expanded to four total cities, same problem; they ran out of cats.
Now, their plan for this year is to expand to the rest of the county. In fact, now, even though they are sort of founded and based on this community cat kind of programming, they are planning to stretch out and reach out to start helping dogs in their community too, because they are finding they have the bandwidth.
Those are two examples where intakes did not go up in other places; they just kept going down.
You can view Cicirelli's complete response to the question by clicking on the video below, or, if reading this post via email, here. The transcript and video of the complete presentation can be found on the Maddie's Fund website.