Editorial
The millions of cats in our homes and in our neighborhoods are not a public health threat. There has not been a confirmed case of cat-to-human rabies transmission in the U.S. in more than 40 years.
On top of that, most cases of toxoplasmosis stem from undercooked food, not cats. It’s extremely rare for anyone to catch toxoplasmosis from a cat, especially a community cat who avoids any contact with people. Simply put, these issues do not constitute public health threats.
Some people mistakenly refer to community cats as “homeless” pets. It’s often forgotten that cats lived exclusively outside for thousands of years until kitty litter was invented in the 1940s. Community cats are not “homeless.” They make their homes in the outdoors today just as they always have.
Remember that when you hear arguments to place cats in shelters because an unpleasant truth is hidden there. Since community cats are not socialized with people, they are also unadoptable in shelters. That’s why virtually every community cat who enters a shelter will be killed unless there is a nonlethal program to sterilize and vaccinate them so they can live out their lives.
Surely the people of Polk County do not want to be known for killing thousands of cats each year. Especially when places in Florida are using more humane and life-saving approaches such as TNR.
Three nonlethal approaches to community cats, “low-income spay/neuter vouchers; small- and large-scale trap, neuter, vaccinate, and return (TNVR); and return to the field (RTF),” were successfully implemented in the public shelter of Hillsborough County, Florida. This paper states that the nonlethal solutions “assisted in achieving a 51% decrease in intake since 2007 and increased the live-release rate to 81.8% of cats taken in at the Pet Resources Center in 2017.”
A study tracked a TNR program on the University of Central Florida campus over the course of 11 years to determine how effective TNR was at stabilizing their community cat population. After just four years, no new kittens were born, and at the end of the study, the overall population of cats had decreased by 66%. Over 80% of the cats had been residents for more than six years, showing that TNR keeps colonies stable and healthy year after year.
