Animal Welfare Professionals

With spay/neuter operations almost universally on pause during the coronavirus crisis, what are folks who usually spend their time trapping and managing TNR doing? How are you filling the down time? What are you doing to prepare for when surgeries restart? 

I'm compiling a list of activities to share and would love to hear what others are doing. Thank you!

We are really hurting on places to spay neuter, especially ferals. We are on hold completely and we are hearing that some spay neuter resources may not open back up locally. Scary and we are worried that the explosion of kittens will only get worse.

We are organizing our supplies and working on policies and protocols too

Same here unfortunately :(

We are struggling with this as well - our spay/neuter clinics are suspended for the month of April, and kitten season is here in TN. We are worried it's really going to set us back in terms of trying to stabilize the population. Right now, we are still taking in ferals that people trap on their own for TNR, but that may change soon. I would love to hear what others are doing.

If you're near Chattanooga, My Kids Have Paws in Dalton, GA might be an option. They have suspended mobile services for three weeks, but clinic is open. 

Our Community Cat staffer is blockwalking to do targeted door hanging so she can build up her waitlist for specific zipcodes. She’s also working on intake data/heat maps of strays at the shelter to make this more effective.

With over 500 animals newly in foster this week, she is also doing administrative support for our foster team. We are a large municipal shelter, and our staff is normally assigned to different departments/roles. So ALL of us are shifting around somewhat to meet current needs of the time. 

I love mapping cats! What program are you using for making heat maps? 

The timing was unintentional, but my second online validation study for Kitizen Science recently launched: https://www.kitizenscience.org/register.jsp  People can participate at home so long as they have a normal laptop/desktop computers (small mobile screens won't work), so I have one of the few free-roaming cat projects that people can do even if they are self-quarantining and can't leave their homes.