Animal Welfare Professionals

For those involved in Return to Field programs, what are your policies for cats who are trapped and surrendered more than once?  Is there a limit to how many times you'll do a return?  What if there are no other live outcomes available?  Your thoughts and reasons for your repeat offender policies would be much appreciated!

We do not have a policy that limits multiple returns. Our officers are actually encouraged to simply let a ear tipped cat out of a trap in the field. The check-and-balance we have is what we call "verified public nuisance" - that requires multiple written/signed reports detailing the public nuisance in the neighborhood from different unrelated persons living in different homes. Once those are received an officer reviews and meets with the complainants to see what resolution is possible. If all other resolutions fail, and we have a confirmed wide-spread nuisance we regrettably then have to euthanize them. We reserve a subtype in our system to track these occurrences and they are VERY rare.

What we find to be essential is not to rely simply on one or two people who might have a personal issue -- that we consider a private nuisance and the only resolution to that is civil court.