Miss Kitty looking for her Furrever home.   She spent two winters in a heated homemade kitty condo on our patio.

This is a big issue where some five million cats are euthanized in the U.S. yearly.  Trap, Neuter, Return (TNR) is a proven means to help control the feral cat population.  Feral simply means, wild & undomesticated.  Some cats are born feral.  Others have been abandoned by their owners and become feral.  The reason for TNR is to neuter/spay and then return the cat to the area in which it was trapped.  This allows feral cats to live out their lives in a humane way and still control the unwanted population.  If cats are trapped and removed from their environment, the vacuum effect occurs and other cats will move into the vacated habitat.  Cats are territorial and will stay in a given area.  The vacuum effect is a well-documented fact and, therefore, TNR does work.  Environmentalists argue that feral cats are destroying the wild bird population.  This is incorrect.  Wild birds are primarily affected by man with the destruction of their natural habitat and other environmental hazards like pesticides and pollution...these are the biggest threats to the existence of wild birds, not cats.