Feral Cat Trap-Neuter-Return Program Ignites Controversy Among Vets
I am a life long cat lover. I am continuously amazed by the ability of cats to adapt to almost every environment on earth, and to survive and reproduce (although not truly thrive as individuals) without the help of humans.
Feline adaptability and survival skills have led, unfortunately, to a tremendous amount of suffering in cats. Enormous populations of feral cats live in every town and city on the fringes of society. Thomas Hobbes wouldn’t have hesitated to refer to their lives as nasty, brutish and short.
Cat advocates in the United States have largely embraced trap-neuter-return (TNR) as a means of alleviating feral cat suffering. TNR programs attempt to stabilize feral cat colonies by catching cats, surgically sterilizing them, and returning them to the environment.
TNR has not been universally accepted by animal welfare experts. Some people point out that TNR programs have failed to achieve a measurable reduction in feral cat populations. And an exchange of letters to the editor in the October 1, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAVMA) drew attention to another possible shortcoming of TNR programs: inadequate postoperative pain control.
Feral cats are completely unaccustomed to handling by humans. To safely perform any form of medical treatment on a feral cat, the cat must be anesthetized. This means that oral pain medications generally are not administered after surgical sterilization. Most cats in TNR programs receive a solitary injection of pain medicine at the time of surgery and are released a few hours after they wake up. The author of a letter to JAVMA pointed out that this is, definitively, inadequate.
Is there a solution? Perhaps. Some pain control medicines are flavorless and can be administered in food to a hospitalized cat–if the cat is willing to eat while hospitalized. Some are, but many aren’t. To provide pain control in this fashion would require that feral cats stay in the hospital for several days after surgery–something that many feral cats would find exceptionally stressful.
Like so many issues surrounding feral cats, the provision of adequate pain control during TNR programs is an ethical minefield. I suspect that this controversy will prove to be as intractable as the problem of feral cats.
You have questions. 
I can understand the concerns of the veterinary community about pain management in animals but is it better that these cats simiply be KILLED? Is the stress of being ‘hospitalized’ for pain treatment a valid trade-off when you consider that, as stated, they probably would not even eat food laced with a pain medication while in captivity? If the cat were not trapped and at least briefly assessed for general health and sterilization, they would still just as likely die from a painful, untreated infection caused by fighting or breeding because they are not, at the very least, sterilized.
It makes great sense to weigh and compare pros and cons but I have great difficulty in reconciling the prevailing mindset that says we are causing undue suffering by not managing some post-operative pain when the alternative for doing nothing is most certainly more incidence of disease, injury and untimely death.
Are there not any time release options available (skin patch or subcutaneous pellet?
I can understand the concerns of the veterinary community about pain management in animals but is it better that these cats simiply be KILLED? Is the stress of being ‘hospitalized’ for pain treatment a valid trade-off when you consider that, as stated, they probably would not even eat food laced with a pain medication while in captivity? If the cat were not trapped and at least briefly assessed for general health and sterilization, they would still just as likely die from a painful, untreated infection caused by fighting or breeding because they are not, at the very least, sterilized.
It makes great sense to weigh and compare pros and cons but I have great difficulty in reconciling the prevailing mindset that says we are causing undue suffering by not managing some post-operative pain when the alternative for doing nothing is most certainly more incidence of disease, injury and untimely death.
Temporary pain is better than permanent DEATH for creatures that have a right to live.
I have had Many cats spayed or neutered and none of them recieved post operative pain management at home. The various vets I have used have never even offered that option. I now know it is something I would ask for, but that being said, my cats didn’t seem to suffer from ungodly pain. The boys were fine and acted just as frisky as if their little hinders weren’t altered. The girls were moving slower and seemed a bit sore but the next day or so were also back to normal. I feel TNR is an excellent alternative to wholesale slaughter of a beautiful speicies.
I feel very sorry for these cats, but spaying and neutering is the only sane way to handle this problem. The inter breeding and over population is much worse on them, not to mention the ones shot and killed or wounded due to so many. The struggle for survival can be very draining and painful also. So until something better comes along I will have to say this is the only solution for now. At least something is being done to help the poor cats in the long run. They suffer everyday trying to survive.
Every time this subject comes up, I remember the poor feral cat I saw one day in a wooded city park. He was sitting not far from me and I could see him clearly through a cyclone fence as I joined my friends.
What I saw broke my heart. His front leg was roughly severed at the halfway point. I am a super empathic person, so I could feel it myself and as I write this now, I am choked up with the picture vividly in my mind.
It frustrates me to no end how helpless I was in that moment. I would’ve never been able to approach him, no matter how much I wanted to gather him up in my arms and take him to the nearest emergency animal hospital.
Worried about pain??? Compare a couple days of spay/neuter pain to the shock, then excruciating pain of that lost limb and then tell me which is worse. And I’m sure there are many others that go through similar events.
Let’s not forget about the ones that aren’t neutered/spayed and go on to have kittens in the winter time. Those kittens can easily freeze to death in most parts of the US.
Better to aim to stop their long term suffering than do nothing because of some short term pain from a routine surgery. Please don’t ever stop. Feral litters need to be prevented.
I’m a feral who has been T-N-R’d. Our local group, Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon, advised my human friends to keep me inside for at least a day, giving me pain medication (supplied in my food). I was sequestered in the spare bedroom in a cat carrier (put in there directly from the humane trap), so I was less stressed than I would otherwise have been. I recovered fully from my neuter surgery and from the anesthetics, and let the human man carry me outside when I went back to my outdoor home. I disappeared for a few days, but after that came back to eat at the regularly scheduled feedings like normal. Over a year later, and I’m doing just fine.
Protocols exist for wildlife that are held and transported between location. I would assume similar housing, feeding and sedation could be adapted for feral cats?
Ok, maybe it sounds harsh but culling feral cat numbers is the only feasible way to get their populations down. Its done with other animals, why not with cats? Especially considering the domestic cat is an invasive species that preys upon local wildlife. Just because they happen to be people’s pets doesn’t exclude them from being managed as wildlife, because a feral cat is essentially a “wild” cat. I may sound like I hate cats but I really don’t! I worked at an animal shelter for many years and cats that came in where either adoptable (pets) or unadoptable (feral). The feral cats were put to sleep and there were still plenty of freindly cats that found homes.
Most groups that do TNR are completely aware of the need for post surgery care. Males are usually less affected by pain, their surgery is much smaller compared to the removal of the ovaries in females. Hence, Male cats are usually released after a day or two of observation and pain medication. Female cats we sometimes keep for up to a week to administer pain meds and antibiotics through their food, and to ensure that the wound is healing properly and no infections develop. We have had ferals with bad injuries that after healing still were able to be released and are doing just fine. TNR is proven to reduce feral numbers. What causes the resurgence of numbers are the lovingly unneutered and unspayed outdoor pets of blissfully ignorant people. Their cats and toms roam and reproduce happily, leaving heaps of unaltered kittens who in a few months start reproducing themselves. TNR Groups are fighting a losing battle when it comes to educating people about spaying and neutering, and about the part we all play in the lives and management of feral pets. Trapping and killing them by the thousands does not make a dent in the feral pet population. Nor does it serve humanity or our environment. Consider that feral cats have over the decades become a necessary and inegral part of wildlife and are a virtual disease police, catching and killing ill or older and slower prey, and reducing rodent numbers. Past feral cat removal projects have proven detrimental when after the last cat was gone, rats, mice and other so called pests took over the space… Now what… kill them all too until all animal life is gone from this planet???
I’m fully supportive of culling and sterilizing. Regretfully, we don’t follow these practices with humans. Sex offenders, murderers… PLEASE!
I appreciate that some of the comments here are very honest, but let’s ‘all’ take a dose of reality. These practices are for OUR human benefit, and not nearly so much the cats’. It’s a means of managing a problem we haven’t found a better solution to. If it were truly done in the cats’ best interests then it would involve integrating, placement and ongoing care, not tossing them back out into a life-limiting reality.
No vet has ever given my pets take home pain meds. They get a shot at the vet’s after surgery and that is it. Even when you request pain meds. That being said none of my animals have suffered greatly. Remember animals tend to have a higher pain tolerance than we do. Even I can go home after surgery and not take pains meds… I just have a high tolerance (and a drawer full of pain meds).
We had a neighborhood feral that wandered the periphery of our yards. I had no idea if it was male or female until she showed up in my yard (go figure) with three female kittens (all tri-colored). It took me 6 months to move them and have them feel comfortable eating on my porch. I trapped 3 (one has disappeared) all at the same time and had them spayed. I kept them in my garage for 10 days (Mom bit my boyfriend) then let them loose. Within a day they were back on my porch.
The vet gave me ear mite medication for Mom. Ha. I told him to keep it. Over time I was able to use Revolution on the 2 kittens but never Mom.
She is gone now and it makes me sad but making her a pet wasn’t an option.
Like some of the others that have commented, I have never had a vet give any of my cats pain meds after spay/neuter surgery. I have 10 cats, and all are “fixed”. Not sure I understand how spaying and neutering doesnt put a dent in feral cat colony populations?
Why not use tax dollars to fund adequate care for these animals? Personally I would be happy to pay a little more in taxes if it meant stray animals would receive better care.
I’ve just had 5 returned to the barn to start their new spayed/neutered life. It’s day 5 and they won’t budge on food and water. I could understand a few days to settle in but wouldn’t dehydration start soon ?
Vet’s on the way
The feral cat issue is an environmental issue, not an animal welfare one. They are a domestic pet species and as such should never be abandoned into our ecology to predate on our natural fauna.
Five years ago I became an uneducated caregiver to 3 cats that a neighbor abandoned because they did not tame themselves while living in her house – kittens from her unaltered pet cat that she allowed to roam outside at will, otherwise her indoor cat. Not able to ignore them or allow them to starve or freeze to death I mustered along doing what I thought was right. Two years ago after being instructed by my vet to Trap and euthanize, which I might add she did not plan to do but wanted the local shelter to do, I stumbled upon a well educated TNR advocate. Last year I managed to TNR five cats 3 feral & 2 strays, these were born to my abandon neighbors cat who has since disappeared, 100% of my colony and of the 9 kittens they had produced one was killed by the neighbors boxer, one was taken to the local shelter, I tamed and placed three in wonderful families that love them dearly and kept four that I tamed for myself. All told out of 14 I took 10 to be spayed or neutered and none of those were administered pain meds after coming home – none of them showed any sign of pain, slowing down or needing it either. None of these 10 cats has ever treated me any differently because of what I did to them or acted as if they were terrified of me for the pain I inflicted. You would think if it was such an unbearable pain the ferals would have never come back due to fear of what I would do next, but they do, to sleep in the shelter I put out or to eat the food I supply. Although 2 of them keep their distance, one wants petted occasionally, but of them they will eat the cat treats that I toss in their direction. My colony is stable at 3 currently while my tame indoor cat population is at 5. TNR is the right thing to do. 26 states support state funded Spay/Neuter and include ferals – are all of those people wrong or uncaring. I’m not saying it is painless, but I believe the short lived pain of a skilled surgery is far less than the pain they could endure in a cat fight or due to pyometra which can be common occurances in the life of a free roaming unaltered cat.