Did you know that hundreds of kittens are born in Los Angeles every week that will never have a home? That a single pair of fertile cats can create over 200,000 offspring in a span of just a few short years? That as a result of prolific natural breeding and pet abandonment there are well over one million homeless stray and feral cats living in the Los Angeles area? As a consequence, homeless cats make up the largest component of animals euthanized by Los Angeles animal shelters every year, at great public expense.

Thankfully, there is a humane, cost-effective alternative to killing homeless cats or doing nothing at all. It’s called Trap-Neuter-Return, or TNR for short. TNR involves concerned citizens just like you who take action by humanely trapping homeless cats, getting them sterilized, and then returning them to the exact location where they were trapped so they can be cared for and live out their natural lives.

Background

As American society has grown and evolved, we have witnessed a collective failure to manage the number of companion animals in our midst. Borne of neglect, ignorance and indifference, this failure has produced millions upon millions of cats forced to live on the streets, and the advent of animal shelters that no longer serve primarily as way stations on the road to recovery or adoption, but instead virtual concentration camps, with too few survivors.

Abandonment and “surrender” of companion animals are the primary factors in creating homeless cat populations. FixNation thus supports initiatives to increase public awareness, educate citizens about humane issues, encourage spay/neuter , encourage first homes as “forever” homes and to promote adoption. In furtherance of this, we devote a portion of our clinic resources to affordable, low-cost sterilization of tame cats.

However, there already exists in the Los Angeles area a very large population of homeless stray and feral cats. Given their strong survival capabilities and prolific breeding, if nothing is done, this population will simply continue to grow. Unrestrained expansion will only lead to more and more cats living in unmanaged colonies, decreased public tolerance of homeless cats and increased pressure on the environment, animal control agencies and our society as a whole.

The usual approach to controlling free-roaming cats is repeated extermination attempts. Long-term studies have demonstrated the futility of such a strategy, since other cats simply move in and replace the killed animals beginning the cycle of reproduction again. On the other hand, Trap-Neuter-Return programs are a very successful method of decreasing stray cat populations. These programs succeed at the least cost to the public and provide the best possible life for the cats themselves. Therefore, FixNation devotes most of its resources – financial, personnel and material – toward decreasing the number of homeless cats in our community though free sterilization services at our clinic, and through massive TNR support.