If you really want to get something done, recruit your friends to help you.

And that’s just what Best Friends Animal Society is doing by giving cat advocates the tools they need to show their local leaders how much of their taxpayers’ money they can save by implementing trap/neuter/return programs (TNR) in their communities.

Best Friends' senior legislative analyst Ledy VanKavage calls it “the Tom Sawyer approach.”

“It was a lot easier for him to get other people to paint the fence than to paint the fence himself,” VanKavage says.

Best Friends has unveiled its Trap, Neuter and Return Cost Savings Calculator, a tool that compares the costs of TNR with the costs of trapping and killing cats in cities, counties and states across the country. The study, commissioned by Best Friends and funded by a grant from PetSmart Charities, shows that TNR programs are much less expensive to implement than trap and kill policies.

Take California, for instance. The study, titled “The Fiscal Impact of Trap, Neuter and Return Policies in Controlling Feral Cat Populations in the United States,” conducted by the New York City-based John Dunham and Associates, estimates there are more than 70 million cats in the Golden State, and about 38.5 million of them are free-roaming — or “community” cats. The study estimates that trap and kill programs cost the state $250 per cat (for trapping, enforcement, sheltering, food, supplies, laboratory tests and euthanizing), while TNR programs cost the state $220 per cat (for trapping, enforcement, neutering and spaying, physical exams and vaccinations). Discounted TNR programs cost the state just $100 per cat (for trapping and a packaged TNR procedure). If the state did away with trap and kill and replaced it with discounted TNR — in which veterinarians and community volunteers offer their services to keep costs down — it could save California taxpayers a whopping $5.58 billion a year.

 
In these tough economic times, cities, counties and states are looking for ways to trim costs. So there’s no better time than now for community cat advocates to approach their government leaders to let them know how much money TNR programs can save them. Now, more than ever, city councils, county commissioners and state legislators are paying close attention to dollar signs.

“Cities are laying off firefighters and animal control officers,” VanKavage says. “They’re looking for ways to save money and now is the time for free-roaming cat people to organize.”

Nationwide, TNR results in a huge savings for taxpayers. There are about 168 million cats in the U.S., and about half those cats are community cats, according to the study. It costs about $16 billion to trap and kill community cats, while discounted TNR programs cost taxpayers about $7 billion a year, according to the study. Replacing trap and kill with discounted TNR could save American taxpayers almost $9 billion a year.

Crunching the numbers
For John Dunham and Associates, counting up community cats and comparing the costs of trap and kill with TNR was no easy feat. The numbers were estimated by sampling a pool of reliable population data of community cats from four states, 12 cities and 13 counties in the U.S.

 
“There is very limited data on animals in this country,” says John Dunham, president and managing partner of the economic research firm. “I can find out more details on how much celery is grown in every part of this country than I can find on feral cats.”

Dunham found it was especially difficult to find data on community cats in small towns operating on shoestring budgets.

“Smaller communities are worried about making sure the streetlight works,” Dunham says.

In most American communities, homeless cats are a familiar sight. For more than 10,000 years, community cats have lived beside humans. With the growing population of community cats, there has been much policy debate on how to handle the situation. Some argue for eradication, but this doesn’t curb population growth because unspayed and unneutered cats will simply take their place and continue to produce more cats. The humane solution is TNR, a cost-efficient, no-kill means of reducing community cat populations.

When cats end up in shelters, they rarely make it out alive. Seventy-two percent of cats who end up in shelters are killed, and 80 percent of those cats are deemed to be unsocialized, according to Focus on Felines, one of four Best Friends campaigns aimed at reaching the goal of No More Homeless Pets. Only 10 percent to 20 percent of pet cats are adopted from shelters, and only 2 percent to 5 percent of lost cats are reunited with their owners.

 
“Cats make up the majority of animals euthanized in shelters,” says Shelly Kotter, campaign specialist for Focus on Felines. “TNR is one of the main components to a successful no-kill movement. This calculator is an awesome tool to help cities embrace TNR. It’s not only the most humane thing, it’s the most economically sound thing.”

For more information on how to use economics in lobbying, click here.

How you can help:

Read more about Best Friends’ Focus on Felines campaign.

The mission of Best Friends’ Focus on Felines campaign is to keep cats safe and out of shelters. We partner with nonprofits and local governments to help achieve a day when there are No More Homeless Pets by implementing innovative trap/neuter/return and education programs to help free-roaming cats. The Focus on Felines web community is a place for cat advocates to meet, share information and provide support and advice on TNR and other cat topics.

Go mobile to save lives! Text CAT to 90999 to give $5 to Best Friends Focus on Felines campaign. Plus, you’ll be able to subscribe to get text alerts from Best Friends sent right to your mobile phone. You’ll receive alerts from us with important updates on how we’re working to achieve No More Homeless Pets.
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Photos by Molly Wald