A local animal shelter will set live traps in the City of Riverside next month in the hopes of curbing its growing population of feral cats. The city council recently agreed to pay PAWS and More Animal Shelter $1,000 to conduct its Trap, Neuter and Release program. According to director of the shelter, Amber Talbot, they’ll set traps on a private property June 28th, have the cats in surgery on the 29th and return them on the 30th. She says they approached the city after receiving complaints about a colony that was getting out of hand from the owner of that property.
The goal of the program is to prevent the cats from reproducing and adding to the city’s feral cat population. Talbot adds a year after they conducted the program in Riverside in 2012, they saw an over 50% decline in the amount of cats they took in from the city.
Since the program began in Washington three months ago, the shelter has trapped 20 cats and prevented an estimated 70 offspring as some of them were pregnant.