The City Council postponed changing the city’s animal control ordinance to allow a volunteer-run sterilization program for the city’s feral cat colonies.
Mayor John Cowman pulled the agenda item from the June 3 Council meeting and scheduled a Council workshop for 6 p.m. June 17 to consider more in-depth options for the city ordinance. The Council will take no action at the workshop.
The issue surfaced last month at the May 6 Council meeting when more than 25 people asked the city to allow trap, neuter and return (TNR) organizations to operate in the city. Since then, opponents to the program have come forward.
The issue is timely, given that Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter announced Monday that it can receive up to 400 kittens and cats each month from the late spring to fall.
Supporters of the TNR program say it keeps the animal population from increasing without killing them. Opponents say the change prohibits them from getting rid of unwanted cats that chose to live on their property and bring danger and disease to their families and pets.
Shelia Smith, organizer of Shadow Cats—a TNR program that operates in Cedar Park, Round Rock and Austin—asked the Council May 6 to consider allowing the change.
The TNR method is “a humane program that will reduce the number of cats in Leander,” she said, adding the cycle of catch and kill needs to be broken.
“There’s a better way to control the community cat population in Leander,” she said.
According to city ordinance, feral cats are trapped and removed by the city’s animal control department, sent to the Williamson County Regional Animal Shelter, which then euthanizes the wild cats.
Euthanization for each cat costs about about $150, Smith said.
Under a TNR program, the cats are trapped by volunteers, taken to the county shelter, sterilized and then returned to their colony—with one ear surgically tipped, or marked, for easy identification.
At the May 20 Council meeting, Carmen Amaya said the ordinance change ties the hands of property owners.
“It would force us to let feral cats live on our property against our will,” she said.
Amaya said a feral cat sterilized and returned to her property attacked her 2-year-old daughter. She said animal control officers offered her no recourse for removing the cat from her property, she said.
Allowing TNR in the city doesn’t address the greater problem, Amaya said, which is the “people who abandon them.”
Local resident Tom Wilcox came to the June 3 meeting to oppose the TNR program, because it doesn’t get rid of the cats.
Richard Archer said sterilizing the cats doesn’t take care of the problem.
“They have attitude,” he said of feral cats. “They go where they want to. They sleep under my porch. They have fleas.”
Smith said since the program started in 2007, more than 14,000 cats have been fixed, which reduced the number of additional kittens that would have been born by at least 20,000.