Spay/Neuter Ferals

Trap/neuter/return (TNR) focuses on managing homeless cats in feral cat colonies.  When we receive a call from a person who has been feeding strays on their property, volunteers go out and assess the situation and talk to the caregiver.  We then make a plan and go out and humanely trap the cats and take them to our spay/neuter clinics where they are spayed/neutered, vaccinated, treated for earmites and fleas and given any medical attention they may need.  We then board the cats for a recovery period during which time we assess whether they are friendly and adoptable or 'feral' and too wild to be adopted.  Friendly cats are transferred to no-kill shelters we partner with; or adopted into new loving homes through our web page, at our Center, or at local pet food supply stores. Kittens under 12 weeks are worked with by volunteers to be tamed down and placed into homes as well.  Those adult cats that are too frightened to be handled or picked-up by people are returned to the original property where they were trapped.  There is always adequate shelter and a caregiver who watches out for them and provides food and water on a daily basis.  We keep in touch with caregivers from the areas we work on and offer continued veterinary care and services to the cats we have made a commitment to helping from the first time we got involved trapping.

TNR was a difficult concept for Animal Allies volunteers to originally accept.  When we began our group in 1994 and started getting heavily involved with our work helping stray cats, we quickly realized that many of the cats that came our way were not friendly and too frightened to ever be adopted into a home.  Many had been outside on their own too long to ever trust humans again and some were even born out there and never had social contact. It wasn't long before volunteer's houses were filling up with cats that could not be placed into homes.  It was then that we began to research the TNR philosophy and have been implementing this very successfully ever since.

We believe that TNR is the best most humane approach for dealing with this widespread problem.  It is making the best out of the very terrible tragedy of cat homelessness.  The problem is created when uncaring people abandon their friendly cats that were not spayed and neutered to begin with and leave them outdoors to fend for themselves.  Cats then form colonies and start to breed at alarming rates creating dozens of kittens in one year.  Before long the problem is out of control and completely unmanageable.  Once Animal Allies volunteers complete their work in a TNR colony, it is usually left with a much smaller number of cats all of whom are spayed, neutered and vaccinated and taken care of for the rest of their lives by their caregivers and Animal Allies.

If you have a stray cat problem in your area or know someone who does, please call us at 228-6755 or email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   Please note that we have a very limited number of volunteers and may not be able to assist immediately as we are always working on many areas at any one given time and always looking for additional volunteers to assist with our work.