Interview! Olivia Westley, Development Director for Forgotten Cats, Inc.
September 8, 2018
Interview! Darlene Duggan, Director of Operations at Tree House Humane Society
September 15, 2018
Thank you to everyone who participated in the Community Cats Sentiment Survey. We collected data over a three-month period and I thought I would share the results with everyone here.
- We had 129 responses.
- We had 35 states represented, with Tennessee having the most responses.
- In addition to the United States, surveys were submitted from Australia, France, Gambia, Iceland, Italy, Jamaica, and the Netherlands.
- 49 people responded that their colonies are growing.
- 47 people said they were stable.
- 33 reported a reduction.
So what does this all mean? At first glance I would think that we aren’t making much of a difference regarding cat overpopulation when I see that the majority of people responded that their colonies are growing. But in looking through the individual responses, I am thrilled to see that colonies are getting smaller or remaining stable in many of the southern states, like Texas and Florida. In general, even if we can report in that a third of our colonies are getting smaller during the summer months (when populations should be growing if we aren’t at 100% sterilization), I think that is a testament to the success of TNR.
I can’t think of any other population management program that could make the claim that a population size is getting smaller during the most prolific reproductive months for cats. We are showing successes, and as with any data collection project, we will continue to monitor the trends. Our urban and suburban human populations continue to grow and with that, you would assume that the cat population would grow too — but that doesn’t seem to be the case…
How will we monitor the trends? We will be relaunching the survey as of December 1 and will run it for three more months at that point in order to capture the winter window. So everyone can submit their responses between Dec 2018 and February 2019. Then we will tally our data, report back on results, then relaunch the survey again May through July 2019 in order to capture annual trends.
We want to hear from as many of you as we can on how you think return to field and TNR programs are working. If we can share that we are seeing a reduction of cats in our communities, then we will know we are achieving our goals. So when we re-open the survey link, please share it with as many people as possible.
