Animal Welfare Professionals

In following Dr. Hurley's take on preventing overcrowding in shelter, several large shelters my rescue works with have begun TNRing basically ANY cat or kitten that comes through their doors - including 1 1/2lb "8 week old" kittens.

Aging is approximate and being done through teeth, presence of descended testicles, and meeting the 1.5lb weight limit for spay/neuter surgery.

This has resulted in dozens of kittens being returned to the streets - including during winter. Rescues have saved multiple litters of kittens from near-death, and found several deceased after being made aware by trappers / concerned community members just days after their release. Most recently a group was returned at night in 38 degree weather, a rescue was alerted and picked them up - where they were sick and near death, and had to be tube fed for several days (one did end up dying).

Shelters frequently get full during kitten season, but this practice is continuing through off-season and when there is "plenty" of space in the shelter. Occasionally, exceptions are made for what staff refers to as "crazy friendly" kittens (ie easy to quickly adopt).

Where do we draw the line? If kittens come in at 1 1/2 lbs, have a full set of teeth, and are eating on their own / apparently healthy - is it the shelter's responsibility to keep them off the streets?

Obviously, the knee-jerk emotional reaction is to say none of these kittens should have been released - they are young enough to be socialized and adopted. But most shelters are not adequately equipped to properly socialize kittens, and a shelter kennel is no place for a kitten to grow up.

Shelters also have limited capacity for managing foster homes - and there is a desire to keep fosters available for sick, injured, or kittens that have no return address, basically kittens that come in and CANNOT be TNR'ed.

Sometimes one of the shelters reaches out to a local rescue to take the kittens, but the rescue has limited capacity - especially during kitten season.

I am on an animal advisory commission tasked with evaluating this policy in our community - to see if it meets the needs of the community, shelter, and tax-payer dollars. 

Does your organization TNR small kittens? Where do you draw the line? Are attempts made to socialize before the decision is made? Is it a shelters responsibility to have a socialization program to keep these kittens off the streets? Or is the shelter simply too risky for young kittens and their best chance is to be returned to the streets where hopefully they have a colony or feeder?

I appreciate any input and insight you can provide on this difficult topic!

#CommunityCatManagement

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Andrew Fistori
President
Feral Freedom Northern California
CA
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We would find space with a foster. We are very lucky in our community that the fosters really step up for the kittens. 

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Renee Milner
Nonprofit Board Member
Animal Shelter Alliance of Rhea
TN
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Hey! 

I think this is a very emotionally charged topic and thats the hardest part... where is the line. 

Each organization has to essentially decide what is right for them and what they deem acceptable and humane. 

I am at a municipal shelter in the middle of Dallas/Fort Worth. I have been here 11 years next month. When I started, ALL feral or anything that ACTED feral, was immediately euthanized. There was no TNR program. Our live release rate was an abysmal 3%. 

Over the years I got to watch this place slowly transform. We still have a ways to go but we started a TNR program about 8 years ago that turned into a mix of TNR for ferals and community cats. If the cats came from the streets we let them go back to the streets. We also set rules. If the same cat was retrapped 3x, on the 3rd time we'd not release it again but put it up for adoption. For kittens we set the expectation that nothing under 3lbs would be TNRd. But any HEALTHY kitten 3lbs and over is sent right through our TNR program. During kitten season our one smaller city takes in roughly 1300 kittens. 

I know the focus was on kittens but I want to add, if we have friendly TNR cats, we do put them on a stray hold where they can be preadopted during their hold. If they are not adopted then on their review date they are spayed/neutered and TNRd.

I remember when we started TNRing kittens at 3lbs I was LIVID and didn't feel like it was right... but I see what an impact it's made on the shelter and our cats are and have been at 99-100% live release month to month for the last 2+yrs. We only have to EU cats/kittens for medical reasons or EU requests from the public. It's never for space or behavior. I personally would NOT be comfortable going UNDER 3lbs, especially in winter, but again it depends on each organization, their views and also their location/weather, etc. 

We also were doing "pre-k" adoptions and adopting out 4 wk old kittens but including all their booster shots ... and I did not and still do not feel right with that as they are SO fragile at 4wks and thats when they are roughly a lb. so a healthy 1.5lb kitten would be more like 6wks vs 8wks and that just seems so so fragile to be TNRing. As for the pre-k adoptions I recently proposed we remove that program from our adoption processes and raise the age of the kittens for adoption and luckily most agreed to the point we were able to change it. It's not 6 weeks or 1.5lbs which I personally again would prefer 8 wks BUT i'll take small wins where I can get them as 6wks is still better than 4!!! 

Sorry for the novel. 

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Angellee Vincent
Volunteer & Events Coordinator
Grand Prairie Animal Services
Grand Prairie, TX
www.gptx.org/paws
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