Katie Lisnik, Director of Cat Protection and Policy for the Humane Society of the United States, and Staycee Dains, Animal Shelter Operations Supervisor for the City of San Jose, CA will be on hand at the Community Cat Roundtable on 9/29/15 at 12:45pm. 

Humanely managing community (feral and stray) cats is a complex issue that concerns many municipal leaders and agencies mandated to serve and protect the public.

The Humane Society of the United States and the City of San Jose, CA Animal Services are pleased to join the ICMA Annual Conference, tabling at Booth 906 in the Exhibit Hall and facilitating a Roundtable on community cat management on Tuesday, September 29, at 12:45 PM.

An ever-expanding cadre of municipalities, agencies, counties and departments support strategic, non-lethal management of community cats, who already exist outdoors, through sterilization and vaccination efforts such as Trap/Neuter/Return (TNR) programs. The goal of TNR is to reduce and eventually eliminate the number of community cats, as well as the nuisance behaviors and public health concerns associated with them.

When TNR is conducted strategically, sustained at a rate necessary to lead to decreasing populations, and supported by municipal leaders and organizations, caring citizens who feed hungry cats, and number in the millions nationwide, can be mobilized to go beyond feeding to providing intervention services such as sterilization and vaccination.  These same individuals would actively oppose lethal measures such as trap and remove efforts, or feeding bans. 

In addition to reducing shelter intake and providing rabies vaccinations, TNR can:

• Decrease municipal costs and public safety concerns.
• Decrease nuisance complaints because spayed and neutered cats are less likely to fight over mates, food, and territory. In addition, spayed and neutered cats roam less and neutering eliminates the pungent odor of male cat urine.
• Reduce or eliminate continued reproduction, to decrease the population of unowned outdoor cats.
• Reduce predation on wildlife.

Join your fellow ICMA Annual Conference attendees to discuss community cats and animal control issues- sharing what has and has not worked in your community.  

To add the Humane Programs and Best Practices in Today’s Animal Care and Control Field to your schedule, click here!