We recent flew past 80 cats on Thursday, catching 13 cats in quick succession this weekend to bring us to 85 captures for the year. 34 kittens and 51 adults. We're pretty close to 50% gone to adoption and 50% TNR.

The bulk of our efforts have still been Autumn Ridge and Uptown, where we'll hopefully see a big difference year over year. Cats will migrate, and it will likely reduce population in nearby neighborhoods as well.

We're on target to hit at least 100 captures this year which is awesome given last year we caught 60. That is a healthy percentage increase.

We Don't Even Want The Cats Here!

The argument I hear most on social media in the Ankeny pages is often this: People don't want the cats in the community. They don't want them in their backyard. While I understand this, I don't understand being annoyed with TNR trappers.

We are trapping the cats, usually at no cost to them, fixing them, and putting them back. No change in the status quo. The cat won't reproduce. Eventually if we keep it up and consistently catch a good chunk of the cat population, the population will reduce. Fewer cats will be in backyards.

You have to remember most kittens born outside don't live past 1 year old. Of the cats that survive till 1, most outside cats have an average life expectancy of 3-4 years. Once TNR starts working in an area it becomes very noticeable.

We already have reports from people who live in the Autumn Ridge trailer park that there are far fewer cats and kittens roaming around this year. Given how many kittens we've trapped near uptown, hopefully there will be a reduction there as well.

There will always be folks abandoning cats. There will always be new community cats having litters. We can just manage them and get them down to greatly reduced numbers. You only have two methods generally to manage them.

TNR or Euthanasia. TNR folks are generally against putting bunches of cats to sleep that never really did anything but be born or put into the wrong circumstances. Its ok, we can have differing opinions on this. We're putting our efforts into our beliefs very actively.

In the end, we're working towards the end goal everyone wants. Fewer cats out in the community suffering and wreaking havok on the native species. Our path does take a little bit longer but it has been shown to effectively work. Panora, Cedar Rapids, and Winterset all have had great success with their programs. The Animal Rescue League is seeing their intake numbers drop for Des Moines.

Supporting us may get you what you want most. You just have to be patient with us.

What can you do?

If you need help with some cats in your community let us know. Message us via our public facebook page. If you are interested in volunteering you can also ask us via a message there as well.

We'll be adding some more avenues for contacting us soon.

We just passed a major milestone with our trapping efforts for the year. This morning our volunteers teamed up to catch our 39th and 40th cats for the year! This is a big number for this point in the year, because last year we only trapped 60 all year between kittens and adult cats.

They were trapped at a vacant house in Uptown where we've now caught 15 cats. Combined with 13 we have caught in Autumn Ridge we're establishing those two areas of town as our primary targets for reducing the unfixed community cat population. The intent is for a year over year reduction in kittens in those two parts of town. We're already noticing some effect in Autumn Ridge from last year's heavy trapping there.

One of the benefits of the Trap, Neuter, and Return process is that the cats come back to the neighborhoods they know and control. This lessens the chances of new cats moving into the neighborhood and kickstarting the process over again quickly. Its called the vacuum effect. If the cats were rounded up and killed or moved outside of town the existing populations nearby would spread out, moving to cover the new territory that is up for grabs. Territorial behavior from an established colony can prevent many of those newcomers from moving in. Some will move in, and you need to continue trapping new cats, but the desperate need evaporates a little bit. It can become routine.

Cheers to the volunteers who trapped today, and cheers to all of you supporting us and making a difference for the cats in Ankeny.

About Trap, Neuter, and Return

If you've never heard about this or see one of us setting a trap up around town, you may be concerned we're trying to hurt the cats. The TNR process is not about hurting the cats but often actually about helping them. The chief help is removing community cat capabilities to reproduce, which reduces the number of kittens being born wild in the community. This often lets cats just be cats for the rest of their life but also has a bunch of other benefits both to the cats and the community.

for the cats​

• The cats receive critical vaccinations for distemper and rabies that will often last their entire life (the average neighborhood cat lives roughly 3 years)
• They often receive low cost health care for infections, bites, scratches, and parasites
• The removal of sexual organs results in reducing undesired behaviors in males and females like spraying to mark territory
• Generally it improves the ability of colonies to form cohesive bonds

for the people​

• it stops spraying of objects and gardens in your yard with urine
• it greatly reduces the number of tom cat fights in a neighborhood, which can be quite noisy
• speaking of noise, if you've never heard cat sex before having that happen less is nice too
• it gradually reduces the number of community cats in your area as they live their lives and have no more offspring
• fewer community cats can act as a vector for the spread of rabies

Its not a perfect solution because, as previously mentioned, while you reduce the population in one neighborhood other areas of town may have an overabundance that will spread out. That said multiple towns in Iowa have seen success reducing populations by up to 90-95% over a five year period. They were much smaller than Ankeny, but Ankeny could see those numbers with enough dedication and effort. It also can't succeed without the support of the city government and its citizens.