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Best Friends Addresses City Council in St. George

May 06, 2009, 7:45PM MT

By Denise A LeBeau

Trap-Neuter-Return presentation was just in time for Mother’s Day!

Trap-Neuter-Return presentation was just in time for Mother’s Day!

by Denise LeBeau, Best Friends staff

Last year Best Friends Animal Society, in conjunction with No More Homeless Pets Utah, addressed the City Council of St George with prospects of a happier and healthier future for all the citizens of the community. These are basic tenets of Trap-Neuter-Return (or relocate)!

In 2008, the presentation featured the recent success of Randolph, Iowa where Best Friends’ Focus on Felines campaign helped implement TNR for a rural community. Randolph had become infamous as the town that would allow people to shoot free roaming cats as a form of animal control. Needless to say - the media swirled, Best Friends swooped and the Mayor of Randolf, Vance Trively, became a TNR convert.

Fast forward to this year’s City Council meeting, where yet another success story was referenced: the Feral Freedom Program of Jacksonville. This private and public partnership is being touted as a real milestone in how TNR can help a community drop their shelter euthanasia rate and bring neighbors together for the benefit of community cats and the people that live there too. And it saves tax payers money! (to watch the video on Feral Freedom, click here)

Can’t argue with facts: one un-spayed cat=thousands of homeless progeny

In addition to the undeniable strengths of such a partnership, the presentation highlighted the startling facts of not pursuing TNR. The ‘one un-spayed cat pyramid’ made the situation very real. Shelly Kotter, Campaign Specialist for Focus on Felines made sure the City Council understood the ramifications of not pursuing a partnership, and the benefits of such an endeavor!

Kris Neal of Adopt A Pet, and a one woman TNR dynamo, bolstered the need for a partnership by highlighting how the recent downturn of the economy has seen even more owner irresponsibility adding to the community cat population. She supported that a Trap-Neuter-Return (or relocate) would be the most effective way to see sustainable progress.

Economy is undeniably adding to the community cat population problem

The goal is to secure a portion of the St. George budget that would be used to trap, shelter and ultimately kill feral or homeless cats to help with TNR. The Four Directions program spearheaded by the Focus on Felines campaign from Best Friends provides free spay and neuter for the feral cat caregivers in the area, and would like to see some of the funding come from the community that is reaping the rewards of their hard work.

Mayor Daniel McArthur listened intently throughout the presentation and asked some very poignant questions. The Mayor was especially interested in microchipping to help track the cats. Making sure nuisance calls are addressed and cats that are problematic get relocated is one of his concerns and a microchip is an easy solution.

Animal Control Officer Dave Vane has lived in the area for over twenty years, and has been handling animal concerns for the city for almost as many. He echoed the Mayor’s sentiments about complaint calls – if a cat is continually a nuisance to a citizen of St. George, he was interested in what the alternatives would be to trap and kill and what type of solutions their funding would go towards.

It was then that a member of the audience chimed in: “I once had a neighbor that didn’t like cats, but her yard had became their home. She got them spayed and neutered, and even started feeding them regularly. Those cats were no longer a problem to her.” This gentleman was only at the meeting because his young son needed to earn a badge for the Boy Scouts, but wound up giving the best unsolicited endorsement of the day for TNR!

Both Kotter and Neal felt that the meeting was very positive. Some good questions were asked, some tough questions were asked, and they felt that they were heard with open minds and hopefully open wallets.

Kris Neal addressing the City Council

Mayor McArthur shared some final thoughts. “It was an interesting presentation, I think it can certainly work. I know how cats are territorial. I’m excited about getting a presentation from the Sheriff’s dept and Animal Control and looking at the reality of what we have now. For us to adopt this kind of program we’ll need to bring in a partner, if we can make this work and save some money, well, we can look at what we can bring to make it work.”

Help the Community Cats of Southern Utah!
• Contact Shannon Riddle, Best Friends Community Cat Program Director, shannonr@bestfriends.org, if you wish to provide a safe location, inquire about spaying or neutering or ask about other Four Directions Community Cat programs.

• For more information on the care of ferals, visit Feral Cat Resources.

• Join the Feral Cat Campaign on the Best Friends Network.

• Support the work of Best Friends by Giving The Gift of Life and Love this Mother’s Day!

images by Best Friends photographer

Comments

Posted May 07, 2009, 8:44PM by georgebailey47

Gotta agree with Kelly.

It's like the gestapo from nazi Germany or something....one phone call and innocent souls get rounded up and taken to death camps (kill shelters).

Yet that neighbor who blasts his music at 4 A.M gets a "Dont do it again, or we might fine you".

Speciesism. Alive and well.

Not only are most of the "nuisance" callers the real nuisances( and miserable whiners, mad at the world) but more often than not, they hate animals, and call and *claim* "nuisances" even if there really arent any.

Some humans consider an animal's act of BREATHING to be a nuisance. Just by BEING, the animal is a "nuisance" to some of these lost individuals.

Tough noogie. Get over yourself. Other lives matter equally as much as your own, is what I say to such party poopers.

Posted May 07, 2009, 2:44PM by Kelly4cats

My hat off once again to Shelly for getting more people to accept TNR.

I want to know though, why answering animal "nuisance" complaints from the public is so damn important. First of all most of the people who complain turn out to be the true nuisances. They are usually the ones in the neighborhood who stick their noses in everyone's business and do things like call the police on their neighbors for parking their car in the wrong place, etc. The ones we come across are not nice people and could not care less if the cat they trap is killed.

The only calls animal control SHOULD be answering are vicious dog attacks and animal abuse and neglect NOT if a cat is pooping in someone's yard. Can I call someone when a bird craps on my newly washed car? What department should I complain to? Why is it I just have to accept that but if a cat is in someone's yard then its fair game and it can be killed.

If a cat is in someone's yard then they should either use nonlethal ways to try and keep the cat off their property or just deal with it. Since they got a problem with cats in their neighborhood the people they should be upset with are the city council for not implementing a TNR program sooner which would have greatly reduced the numbers of cats out there and prevented many of these complaints. Tax payer money SHOULD NOT be wasted on animal control answering calls about a cat in someone's yard or killing innocent cats and kittens who are just the result of these places failing to solve the problem. This money should be spent on SOLUTIONS. Why won't this ever happen???? Is it a wonder why this country is going broke?

Posted May 09, 2009, 9:25AM by Kelly4cats

Even though thousands of feral and stray cats are killed at the shelter in my city they only make up less than 5% of the cats out on the street. Not only is this not population control, it means the city ordinance that makes trapping and killing cats legal is catering the minority portion of our city's population since most people aren't trapping the cats. My ass-backwards city is like most out there and nothing changes because the majority is not speaking up to abolish trap and kill.