A project years in the making by a local animal rescue will come to fruition this spring.
Johnson County Community Cats is planning to trap, neuter and return community cats at CountryView Mobile Home Park in Franklin. Community cats is the county’s only cat-specific rescue and trap-neuter-return, or TNR program. Since it began in 2013, they have transported over 5,000 cats for spay and neuter, and adopted out hundreds of friendly cats to new homes.
CountryView has had issues with cats for several years, and community cats has been unable to do anything about it until now. This year, the nonprofit plans to do outreach in the area to get community cats fixed, and help cat owners microchip and fix their own pets, said Regan Lambert, director.
Community cats, which is 100% volunteer-ran and donation funded, received a $5,000 grant from the Johnson County Community Foundation, and had a fundraiser late last year to make it happen. About $1,500 from the grant is designated to help with the CountryView operation, she said.
The fundraiser raised nearly $3,000, Lambert said. The ultimate goal is for community cats to team up with the Johnson County Animal Shelter to help make this possible. Community cats’ goal was to raise $2,325 to fix 15 community cats and 15 pet cats at no cost to the owners, the organization says.
“The goal this year is to get cats fixed,” Lambert said.
The animal shelter has worked with community cats for a number of years, and sometimes asks the organization to help assist with trap, neuter and return in large areas. The two organizations work closely together, and whenever the shelter needs additional help, community cats is there and vice versa, said Cari Klotzsche, animal control director.
The shelter has noticed an influx of kittens with diseases and poor medical conditions being brought in from CountryView. One CountryView resident has found 100s of kittens over the last few years, and brought them to the shelter, many of them with diseases, Klotzsche said.
“There’s a huge problem at CountryView; not only is there overpopulation, there’s disease spread. … We’re getting the kittens but never seeing the adults,” she said. “There’s a lot of (bad) areas, but it’s one of the worst for illnesses.”
Community cats hopes to begin the outreach at CountryView in March or April, when it is warmer. By then, the nonprofit hopes to have another grant lined up for their outreach efforts, Lambert said.
When the operation begins, community cats plans to have an outreach day at CountryView, where volunteers will go out and talk to everyone in the community. Volunteers will ask them if they have indoor or outdoor cats, or if they need cat food. They will also ask them if they need help getting their cats spayed or neutered, she said.
If that’s the case, community cats will take the pets to get fixed before bringing them back to CountryView, Lambert said.
Trapping, neutering and returning the cats at CountryView will help the community and the county in the long-run, Klotzsche said.
Spaying and neutering is one of the most important things people can do to help their pets, Lambert said.
“It is the most important thing we can do, and there are resources out there at an affordable cost to do so,” she said.
