photo by: Journal-World Photo Illustration

Lawrence Journal-World Editorial

The Lawrence Humane Society’s “catch and release” plan for dealing with feral cats is sensible and should be approved by Lawrence city commissioners.

On Tuesday, the Humane Society asked commissioners to change city code that bans cats from roaming free. Humane Society Director Kate Meghji said the society wants to implement a program in which stray and feral cats are trapped and then vaccinated and spayed or neutered before they are released to roam free again. The strategy is a better way to control the stray cat population than the current approach.

Feral cats were euthanized until 2016 when the Humane Society implemented a working cat program. Currently, some stray cats that are picked up by animal control are adopted out to farms or industrial sites in the county, where they are used to help control rodents. But feral cats are difficult to adopt out and stay at the shelter an average of 38 days compared with 13 days for socialized cats. Housing feral cats costs the shelter more than $500,000 per year.

Worse, the population of feral cats continues to increase. Already this year, the shelter has taken in more than 900 stray cats.

“We’re pulling them out of the community either by euthanasia or by removing them, and the populations aren’t decreasing,” Meghji said. “So until we have the opportunity to be proactive, they’re never going to decrease and the shelter will continue to have to bear the financial burden of taking care of these animals.”

Meghji said that when feral cats are removed from colonies, the cats breed to fill the void. By adopting the catch and release program, breeding would be reduced over time and the cat population would stabilize.

City commissioners took no action on the Humane Society request on Tuesday. Instead they asked that the topic be discussed further and be returned to the city agenda in February.

The goal should be to reduce the population of feral cats while treating the cats in a humane way. The catch and release program is the best way to do that, and city commissioners should modify city code to allow for the animal control change when the issue comes back before them in February.