Colorado Clowder: Our Two Year Feral TNR Anniversary

With September comes the second anniversary of our Trap-Neuter-Return effort with our neighborhood feral cat colony. We have to thank the wonderful people at Wild At Heart and the Humane Society of Boulder Valley. The process has proved to be intense and interesting while simultaneously tedious, time consuming, and slow. However, we are showing that TNR does work with the proper persistence. Persistence is the key, because without it, if we quit, the colony would again increase in size over time.

Buddy, our colony mascot, supervising the garden
from a sunny high point the day before he disappeared
for good. We suspect that curiosity may have gotten
the best of him.

We've experimented with a lot of traps and tools. We've tracked the population and watched it fluctuate both up and down. We've done our best to record all of the data that we can. Call it a scientific approach to feral cat management. We've been fortunate to find homes for some kittens while they were young enough and unfortunate to find the remains of the others that nature deemed not so lucky. We have never found a dead adult cat and we often ponder about what happened to them when they do disappear. The population is currently half of what it was at its highest point and we can only imagine in dread at the large number of cats there would be if we had not started this project two years ago. We are still optimistic that our efforts will someday lead to a humane end for the entire colony.

"I was told there would be pizza and beer."

We should also say that we have been pleasantly entertained by the cats (at times). It is important to remember that these animals did not have a choice in their current situation. We are witness to the behaviors that have bound Felis Catus to human societies for thousands of years. We choose to observe them in this environment only because there are there, just as they observe us because we are here. Their intra-colony relationships and hierarchies can be quite interesting, and their silly behaviors provide some good laughs. They are ultimately doomed to the same fate as their ancestors before them, just as we are. We can only do our part to prevent their offspring from that fate by directly preventing the creation of offspring while, at the same time, not punishing these cats for simply existing.

---