Study: Community cats are rarely far from help

The benefit of return-to-field (RTF) programs is well documented. By spaying or neutering and vaccinating healthy community cats (outdoor cats who live in the community and may be cared for by multiple people) and then returning them to where they were found, communities can greatly reduce the number of cats killed in shelters. These programs also reduce overcrowding in shelters, thereby decreasing the risk of disease transmission and freeing up resources for other animals in care. Plus, they minimize stress on the cats, who may not be comfortable in an unfamiliar shelter environment, by getting them back to their outdoor homes as quickly as possible.

Despite these benefits, though, some advocates worry about returning cats without knowing who’s caring for them.

In most instances, it’s simply impractical to track down caregivers for each cat admitted to a shelter as a “stray.” This is especially true for high-volume shelters and those with large jurisdictions. Some shelters have begun using custom collars to gather information about who’s caring for the cats being returned to their community. But most shelters rely on the general health of these cats as a sign that they are receiving sufficient care.

A recently published study in the Journal of Shelter Medicine and Community Animal Health provides more direct evidence of a robust “caregiver network.”

Using a large set of data from Louisville, Kentucky, the researchers calculated the distances between community cats and the nearest caregivers. For the purposes of this study, caregiver was defined as any resident participating in the area’s extensive trap-neuter-vaccinate-return (TNVR) program for community cats — nearly 1,500 in this dataset.

Given this network of caregivers, the researchers wanted to know how close each cat was to caregivers other than those already caring for the cat. In other words, where were the caregivers who might take over if a cat’s primary caregiver was unable to continue providing care? Half of these cats had a potential backup no more than about 260 yards away — a little more than two football fields.

For “stray” cats admitted to the area’s shelter, the challenge was a little different. Although it’s likely that most of these cats also had caregivers, the caregiver’s identity — and location — was unknown. In this case, the same location data used for the first part of the study was compared to the location data provided by the shelter (i.e., where the cat was found). Where did these cats fit into the community’s caregiver network? The answer was remarkably similar: Half of them had an available caregiver no more than about 270 yards away.

There are a number of factors suggesting that these distance estimates are rather conservative. In other words, the caregiver network is likely even more robust than the estimates suggest. Granted, not every community has Louisville’s robust TNVR and RTF programs, so it’s important not to generalize the findings too broadly. On the other hand, the general health of cats in these programs has been documented in numerous studies across numerous communities. And, as this study’s authors point out, “The general availability of resources revealed by these findings might help explain the results of previous research (and considerable anecdotal evidence) documenting the good general health of community cats.”

Their conclusion should come as good news to anybody still on the fence about RTF programs, as it makes the case for support more compelling than ever.