One Year Update!

It has been just over a year since we started this venture, a perfect time for an update. It has been a bit of a slow year, but the information is still interesting!

Then and Now, this is the 9th cat that we trapped.  She is super curious, but most definitely feral.

Over the course of the summer, we have seen a significant drop in population. There were very few kittens this year because so many of the cats are fixed. These kittens would have naturally replaced any cats that died this year and kept the population numbers steady. Instead, the kittens that were found were brought to the humane society early enough to be socialized.

Click Here for more details about our methods for tracking population.

As we predicted, a number of the roaming males have disappeared since there are few unfixed females in the colony. As it currently stands, they will all be taken off the list if we don't see them again before the middle of next month.

Some of the fixed cats that have disappeared were smaller and may have been picked off by a predator. We spoke with some employees at a Birds of Prey Rescue & Rehabilitation facility who told us that a large hawk or great horned owl could easily carry off an 8 pound cat. There are many cats in the colony that we believe to weigh less than or equal to this.

It is also possible that members of the neighborhood have made the cats disappear by either using inhumane methods (which we really don't want to think about), or by trapping & relocating them out of the neighborhood. The different materials that we've read on humane relocation all agree that it takes weeks of time and effort to do it right. Relocating a feral cat as a barn cat will most likely be a slow death sentence if not done properly. Most cats will leave the new location as soon as they are released and will wander aimlessly searching for their old home.

Disease and old age are another theory, however the cats that have disappeared were in good health, young, and vaccinated. We have also not seen any cats showing physical signs of disease (which is something the local Animal Control asked us to watch for).

These different scenarios cover the potential possibilities for the population decrease (the ultimate goal of TNR). We will only know for sure if we ever find deceased cats ourselves, and (un)fortunately, we have not found any. So for now we just keep tracking the numbers. If the current trend continues, the colony's population at the end of the year could be as low as half of the number it was last year.