Community neutering work engages with communities to educate owners about the
neutering of pet cats. As well as changing behaviours and attitudes towards
the neutering and welfare of strays and ferals. The overpopulation of urban
strays, which we like to call community cats, causes nuisance issues for
residents and we can manage this through Trap, Neuter, Return and the rehoming of
the friendly, abandoned stray cats.
Messing in the gardens, ripping bags open... just loads of them everywhere. There are
quite a lot of them. There are a lot of them everywhere.
This is Bulwell and look – it's
too overpopulated, especially with cats. Not as much with dogs, but cats, the most.
Definitely. I'll tell you that that for nothing.
One part of the role that we do is Trap, Neuter and Return of stray and feral
cats. We have to do a lot of work before, having to make sure all neighbours and
neighbouring areas are aware of what we're doing and how they can make their
pet cat identifiable to make sure we are getting the true strays and ferals
in the area.
So what we do with the door-knocking –
we knock and if there's no answer then we do post a leaflet through the
door. If they do answer but aren't seeing any strays, we just give them one of
these and then they can let us know if they see any stray cats in the area and
if they're happy to give the details, we take those as well.
A feeder is the
person that is feeding the stray or the group of strays. We normally find them by
either them coming and approaching us saying they're feeding cats and want some
help, or when we do our door-knocking we'll come across them that way.
Yeah they came around door-knocking and then obviously we told them that we'd got one
round the back, so they came and dropped us a trap. We keep feeding them and another
one comes and then another one comes and basically just trying to keep the strays
down to a minimum as far as them breeding, getting them neutered, get people
looking after them and not trying to kick them or chase them. We're just trying to
look after the animals around here mate.
When we go out and trap the stray and
feral cats, it can be quite a long, intensive process. Normally we try and
get the feeders to get the cats into a routine, so hopefully they will be there
at the set time every day, and we'll try and trap at that time. It can be very
unpredictable. You have to be very patient and sometimes it takes repeated
visits to make sure the whole group has been done. So we put the food right at
the top end so that they've got to come all the way in to get it.
We trail a bit of food down it to try and encourage them in. The trap's been in the
garden for a week so the cat can get used to it. So hopefully it's nice and normal for
him to eat out the trap every day. We always take the doors with us because we
don't want anyone trying to catch the cat when we're not here. So now we just
need to hide out the way and hopefully he'll be out soon for his dinner.
Normally they would come at the preferred feeding time – if there's any disturbances
that they're not used to it can put them off, so anything up to an hour and a half,
really, that we'll wait just to see if he'll turn up.
Unfortunately we didn't get the boy we were after. It's just the harsh realities
of TNR I'm afraid. That does mean that we've got to take the time to come back
to this site now and sit again and hopefully get him at that time. Fingers
crossed we'll get him next time.
We do get a lot of people that, when we say
we're going to trap the cats, they are quite concerned. But once we explain that
they're humane traps that the cat goes in because there's food in it and all we do then
is to pull a string to close the door. It's a lot less stressful for the cats than
actually trying to grab them and get them into a carrier. A lot of people are then
very understanding and really happy for us to get on with the work.
Well it was a really successful trap – nice and quick. He was quite a confident cat
because he has been a pet cat before and he was nice and hungry. We were able to get in pretty
quickly and got him swapped over, straight into a carrier ready to go to the vets.
Having a high visibility and a strong presence on the ground really helps
raise awareness of the Trap, Neuter, Return work and can help to build
essential relationships with people in the community.
We found the charity in
the neighbourhood catching cats that been around to get them spayed and looked
at – that's how we bumped into each other – we got talking. We've got quite a few
strays around the area and they got hold of my cat. I ended up with three
un-neutered female cats and the charity helped me afford to get them neutered so
this wouldn't happen again. I think people need to know that the help is
available, they don't always know, they're not
always educated on that matter. They might just end up with a kitten and they
have no idea what they're actually doing. Get the logo out there, let them know
that the help is available. I think you're doing a fantastic job.
We've found a great way of getting out in the community so far is
attending events, so we want to try and get to more events during the summer to try
and raise our awareness more and hopefully get more people coming forward
and reporting the stray cats. But it's just having the time to be able to do
all the work with the cats and also attending the events.
Yes, we've got a number of cats entering the back garden and we've had
one cat have a litter of kittens. We just needed to know the correct way of handling the situation.
If the cats keep breeding, it's going to be more and more and more...
there'll be no end to it.
I think they've got more information today.
An answer to the problems.
It's extremely important that community
neutering work involves members of the community in projects, rather than
delivering to them and some of the ways this is achieved is working alongside
public agencies and other charities.
We've just arrived at the Community
Payback Office to pick up the cat shelters that they've been making for us.
This is the first batch so we're really excited to see how they've turned out.
We were approached by Cats Protection to help build these cat shelters to help feral
and stray cats in the local area. Cats Protection gives us all the materials to
make what we're doing. We use offenders who were on sentence from court to make
these up into a finished article, which are then collected by the team to take
out into local areas. We're delighted to work with the charity. It benefits our
service users and also the charity itself and the local communities. We hope this is going
to be a long-term relationship with the charity and we look forward to new and
future projects when they come.
The role has so many layers and there
are so many different ways community neutering officers work to engage with
communities and raise awareness.
Another aspect of our role is scanning cats for their
microchips. I've had one myself, where we actually went out to TNR a cat,
we scanned her, she turned out to have a microchip and the owners actually lived
quite a way from where we caught her. She did manage to get home and
she's now living happily back at home after two years of straying.
So we're back at the vets and we're going to collect the cat that we caught Monday
night. It's turned out to be nice and friendly so we're going to take him
into the adoption centre for rehoming.
From here the cat will have an in-house health-check with one of our team today.
He will have flea and worming treatment applied, go to the vet's next week and
get the rest of his checks done. And if the vet's happy with him, he'll get his
microchip in two weeks' time and he'll then put up for adoption. Hopefully we'll
find a nice family for him to go to. The work that these guys are doing in Bulwell
is absolutely fantastic and it has started to make a bit of a dent in the
problem. It's going to take a while to get it under control but I think every
bit that you guys are doing is helping and we're trying to help support you
where we can by taking in cats like TJ.
I love being a community neutering officer
because you get to help a lot of cats that probably otherwise wouldn't ever
get to see a vet or get any veterinary treatment at all. To anyone that's
watching this film, I just want you to realise how important neutering is for
your cat and to try and spread that message to friends, family, neighbours, just
to try and help as many cats as you can.
I'd love people to take away how
much of an impact we've created already and how much this role is really making
a difference. One cat being neutered is a massive change to that area.
Neutered pet cats and neutered healthy, stable populations of community cats are so
satisfying to see. It's also great to see how working with communities achieves
our aim of people having a greater understanding of cats' needs and
community cats being seen as an asset, not a hindrance, once their numbers are
controlled and managed.
Without the cats, we'd have rats, I think.
As soon as we've had these kittens, I'm ready to get this cat neutered as soon as
possible. I'm not asking for any money for them, as long as they go to a good home.
That's perfectly good with me, I'm happy with that.
It makes all the hard work so worthwhile.