What is Kats Alley Cats?
Kat’s Alley Cats is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to humanely reducing the overpopulation of community cats in the city of Lubbock through the process of Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR).
Officially started in 2018, Kat’s Alley Cats was created through the realization of a huge need of proactive resources that help control the community cat population. Community cats can often be described, or known as, feral, homeless, unowned, free-roaming or alley cats. Not adoptable by nature, these cats often go unnoticed and without help, with the perception of their lives being “less valuable.”
Through TNR, Kat’s Alley Cats takes charge in improving the lives of these community cats by sterilizing, spaying/neutering and vaccinating. These proactive efforts allow the cats to return to their community, ultimately stabilizing the population and reducing the number of homeless cats.
Being the only resource of its kind in the City of Lubbock, the overall need and amount of work for Kat’s Alley Cats has grown immensely these past few years. From averaging 300 TNRs in the infancy of the organization, to completing 1,394 surgeries in 2020, Kat’s Alley Cats work is far from done. With their team of six operating day-to-day tasks, 15-20 volunteers helping monthly and three veterinarian clinics conducting surgeries, the nonprofit continues to push toward the overall mission of humanely, effectively and permanently reducing the overpopulation of community cats and raising awareness to the growing issue.
Through their principle of cultivating kindness and inspiring compassion, Kat’s Alley Cats strives to create awareness and bring change to the overpopulation and treatment of cats in the Lubbock community.
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What is TNR?
Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) has proven to be the only effective long-term solution to humanely controlling cat populations.
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TNR is now the most widely implemented and practical solution, as it is the only method that is proven to be both humane and effective at stabilizing and reducing community cat populations. TNR is a process in which community cats are humanely trapped, spayed/neutered, vaccinated, marked with an identifying ear tip (typically on the left ear), and returned back to the original trapping location. Once the cats are spayed/neutered and returned to their colony, the population size will stabilize and gradually decrease, as no new litters of kittens are being born.
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For a long time, "catch and kill" was a widely accepted method of managing community cat colonies. While this method caused an immediate decrease in the number of community cats in a given colony, it proved to be ineffective over time. Not only was “catch and kill” deemed to be cruel and inhumane, but it also proved to be counterproductive and costly. Colonies subjected to "catch and kill" ended up rebounding back to their original size, or greater, as a result of what is known as the vacuum effect.
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What is the vacuum effect?
Community cat colonies, like other populations of animals in the wild, have a certain population size at which they are most stable. When the population size of a colony is drastically reduced in a short amount of time (whether completely removed or partially reduced), the cats collectively react by trying to stabilize the drop in population.
New, unaltered cats, whether from neighboring territories, remaining members of the colony, or those born from survivors, will increase mating activities in an effort to create more offspring and return the colony to a sizable population. Sooner or later, the empty habitat will inevitably attract unaltered cats from neighboring areas and allow them to take advantage of the same territory and resources that attracted the previous cats.
The removal of a community cat colony does nothing to eliminate the environmental resources within the area; it simply opens the door for newcomers to move into the previously occupied area and take advantage of the habitat and resources left behind by the former colony residents. Due to the vacuum effect, "catch and kill" and “catch and remove” methods have no lasting impact on effectively reducing community cat populations.
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Why is TNR important?
Once community cats within a colony are spayed and neutered, not only will the population stabilize and gradually decrease, but the cats will also be healthier and coexist more peacefully within a neighborhood.
Female cats will be healthier and less prone to cancers, infections, and injuries commonly inflicted during mating, pregnancy, and labor. Male cats will gradually lose the urge to roam and fight, and will also be less prone to cancers, injuries, and infections.
Behaviors associated with unaltered cats, such as mating, yowling and marking territory with urine, will diminish. Additionally, areas of colonies that previously served as habitual “breeding grounds” in which intact males and females constantly attracted one another for mating purposes, will no longer continue to attract unaltered neighboring cats. In fact, once cats in the colony are fixed and returned back to their territory, they will naturally keep other neighboring unaltered cats out of their established territory.