Working With Springhill Stray Cats

Sherri Johnson is helping the stray cat population in her neighborhood of Springhill. I sent her an email asking about it and got back a great response with some details on her and her neighbors efforts to fight this common problem. Make sure go the the full article for pictures of two of the cats that she ended up adopting. Thanks Sherri for your efforts and sharing. The full text of her email follows.

“Like most city neighborhoods, Springhill has its share of homeless cats. There have been many over the years and after some time and effort and a few adoptions, we managed to get our stray cat population growth to near zero. That luxury lasted a couple of years. Then last summer, a neighbor noticed a colony of cats had taken shelter in a shed behind 21st street. This winter we began to notice a few “new” cats around the neighborhood as they began to expand their territory beyond 21st and Stonewall.

So with the help of our neighbors, we organized a “kitty round-up” effort. We are trying to capture and spay/neuter as many of these young strays as possible. Neighbors have volunteered for various tasks such as setting up and monitoring the safe traps, keeping trapped cats indoors overnight before and after their procedure, delivering the cats to Dr. Jack at Church Hill Animal Hospital, and picking them afterwards. Cats are released after their recovery if no one wants to adopt them. Other neighbors who aren’t inclined to help with the actual trap/spay-neuter/release efforts are making donations to Church Hill Animal Hospital.

We send a notice to the neighborhood via the Springhill yahoo group telling folks which evenings we plan to set up traps so that they can keep their cats indoors. We don’t want to catch anyone’s pets. We haven’t been able to set up this winter as often as we would like due to the very cold weather and the snow, but now with warmer, less-snowy weather, we’re ready to get back to it.

So far, we have caught and neutered one stray male. We also captured a female that Dr. Jack was prepared to spay until she spied the kitty’s spay scar. Apparently this kitty was already spayed, so Dr. Jack gave her a rabies shot for good measure, and notched her ear (which is the common way to mark a stray as already spayed/neutered). This cat apparently loves the trap or food or both. We’ve trapped (and released) her a couple times since. We hope to capture some other females soon but so far no luck.

But the effort continues. And hopefully Springhill will get its homeless cats back to near zero-population growth again.”

Boy Cat is a stray adopted by Sherri

Fuzzy too is a stray that now lives with Sherri.