Alley Cat Advocates

If you find yourself adopted by some fuzzy little street urchin, Alley Cat Advocates can help you make sure that that street urchin doesn’t turn into three dozen street urchins.
Alley Cat Advocates helps take care of stray and feral community cats via a TNR (Trap, Neuter, Return) program. They’ll provide you with traps, teach you how to use them, and set you up with an appointment at the SNIP Clinic to get the furry little urchins «altered» and vaccinated. You drop them off on the assigned day (early morning) and pick them up the next morning and return them to their original location.
TNR programs work to keep the stray and feral cat population under control and result in fewer euthanized cats. Many animal control services will euthanize animals when they exceed maximum capacity. So, turning to those services to control feral and stray cat populations doesn’t really help the animals. I mean, would you rather be scooped up, neutered, vaccinated, tagged, and returned to your original stomping grounds or would you rather be scooped up, neutered, vaccinated, tagged, kept in a tiny cage for months, and eventually killed? See, that shit would suck.
Additionally, stray and feral cats are great at controlling vermin (mice/​rats) and keeping other wildlife from ransacking your trash. Basically, once that feral cat sets up territory in your yard, you’ve got yourself a patrolling guard kitty. Show some gratitude and get that hard working feline spayed/​neutered and vaccinated.
Alley Cat Advocates doesn’t help with rehoming so if you are trying to find homes for a stray cat, you’ll need to contact the Humane Society or No-​Kill Shelter. Keep in mind that feral cats are very difficult to find homes for because they are not socialized to humans and, frequently, find shelters stressful and exhibit «unfriendly» behavior. TNR is the safest, most humane solution for feral cats.
There’s a plethora of information on the Alley Cat Advocates website (
) to help you care for community cats. They’ll teach you all about building cheap shelters and setting up feeding stations and provide links to additional resources.