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.