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.