TNR Handbook - Neighborhood Cats

14. Relocation & Sanctuaries
• Relocation
When is relocation appropriate?
The Neighborhood Cats TNR Handbook
When caring but inexperienced people
confront a feral cat colony that is unmanaged
and the object of community hostility, often
their first thought is to move the cats to a safer
place. They don’t understand how difficult it
is to find a safer place, how arduous and
uncertain the process of moving the cats can
be, and how important it is to the cats to be
able to stay right where they are.
The cats in a feral colony cherish their
territory. They know their home extremely
well with all its pitfalls, shortcuts and hidden
passages. Next to food, their surroundings are
the factor most important to their survival.
Their home – shabby as the parking lot, back
alley, empty lot or crumbling building may seem to us – is truly their castle. Once a
colony becomes managed, the cats may live relatively long, healthy and satisfying lives if
the security of their home remains intact.
Because their territory, as well as their bonds to one another, is so important to them,
relocation should be considered only when their environment is truly under imminent
threat. Most problems can be solved through TNR. A community’s initial hostility due
to noise, odor and endless litters of kittens is ended by neutering; encroachment in a
garden can be easily deterred; a property owner’s complaint might be satisfied simply by
moving a feeding station.
Relocation is hard work, requiring the cats to be confined in their new territory for
two to three weeks until they learn their food source has changed. Otherwise, they’re
likely to immediately run off in search of their old stomping grounds. Even with a two to
three week confinement, some may still run away after the release. And this assumes a
suitable new site has been secured, which is no easy task either.
Yet another consideration is what will happen in the old territory if the cats are
removed. If the habitat still contains sufficient food and shelter, then sooner or later new
cats will move in to take advantage and the cycle will begin again.
For these reasons, every possible avenue towards allowing the cats to stay should be
thoroughly explored and relocation should be considered only as an absolute last resort.
For example, if the colony lives in an abandoned building that is about to be demolished
or a number of cats have been maliciously killed and the violence can’t be stopped. But
these are extreme situations and, hopefully, very much the exception.
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