Audrain County’s feral cat population cannot be controlled by simply not feeding strays or shooing them away. 

Instead, the Audrain Humane Society will soon be implementing a trap-neuter-release program to address local cat colonies starting in Mexico this fall. The humane society will host a community forum where it will discuss the program and volunteer opportunities on Aug. 10 at 211 W. Monroe St. from 6-7 p.m. 

“Our community has a lot of feral cats,” Marilyn Niekamp, Audrain Humane Society board president, said. “A lot of people are feeding them, but they don’t have the money to get them spayed or neutered.”

The humane society’s TNR program will not only cover the cost of trapping and neutering, it will also vaccinate the cats before releasing them. 

Niekamp said there are a lot of reasons many residents do not like having feral cats around for reasons including, but not limited to, the destruction of flower beds and damage from cats jumping on vehicles.

According to a 2022 PNAS study entitled “Reduction of free-roaming cat population requires high-intensity neutering in spatial contiguity to mitigate compensatory effects,” the domestic cat ranked high among the most destructive alien species. Cats are carnivorous predators that can negatively affect the local wildlife and pose a sanitation threat to humans.

What people don’t realize, Niekamp said, is that simply trapping the animal and taking it to the shelter to be dealt with, is not the answer.

“Another cat is right behind them that will come into the community because there’s no cat there,” Niekamp said. “So guess what? You’ve got that same cat problem again.”

The goal of Audrain Humane Society’s TNR program is to simply slow reproduction within the existing cat colonies — not get rid of them entirely. Ideally, the practice will prevent unsterilized cats from entering the community and reproducing.

“Columbia’s had a lot of success with this, and it usually takes a year or so to see,” Niekamp said.

The Audrain Humane Society isn’t quite ready to start trapping yet. Niekamp said the board hopes to get the project off the ground in the fall. In the meantime, the humane society has been collecting donations for traps. Recently, it met its goal of 20 humane traps, but there is still a need for more.

“We’re just starting off kind of small and going to take it from there,” Niekamp said. 

The Audrain Humane Society will also be developing a database to track cat colonies and a request form for residents to fill out when they have concerns about a cat colony that they would like to see addressed. 

Trap-neuter-release efforts will start in Mexico, but the humane society’s goal is to expand the program to all of Audrain County.