Latest / The Animal Advocate / Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR): Feral and Community Cats and the Law

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Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR): Feral and Community Cats and the Law · The Animal Advocate

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Imagine you're walking through your neighborhood and you see 5 or
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6 cats hanging around an abandoned building. Looks like
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somebody's been putting food out, and lately you've noticed kittens.
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So what should happen to those cats? Should animal control come pick
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them up? Should someone try to find them homes? Should
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everybody just leave them alone? Or should they be trapped,
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sterilized, vaccinated, and put back where they were found?
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There's no answer on that list that costs nothing.
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Some put wildlife at risk, some cost cats their lives,
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and where you live shapes which of those options are even available.
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Welcome to The Animal Advocate, where we arm animal lovers with
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the information and inspiration you need to become effective
0:50
advocates. I'm your host, Penny Ellison, and I've taught
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animal law and advocacy at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006.
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If you've ever thought, someone should do something about that,
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I'm here to guide you on your journey to being that someone.
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You can find us on the web at animaladvocacyacademy.com.
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And that's where you'll find show notes and resources, and you can send
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us your comments on episodes and ideas for topics you'd like to hear
1:20
on future shows. So, on to today's topic.
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Today, we're talking about that last option:
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trap-neuter-return, or TNR. Some
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cities have made room for it in their laws. Philadelphia is one.
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Philadelphia's code authorizes animal control to sterilize feral
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cats and return them to their colonies. Other places
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haven't, in part because TNR can be controversial.
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Supporters see it as a humane way to bring cat populations down
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without killing cats. Critics say it leaves cats
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outdoors, where they can suffer, and where they can hunt wildlife.
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Both sides have a point, and I want to take both seriously.
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This topic is also a good way into something I'll be doing more of.
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I'm planning to devote some upcoming episodes to wildlife,
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and TNR is where caring about cats and caring about
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wild animals run straight into each other. So, in
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this episode, we're going to talk about what TNR is,
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why communities use it, whether it works, and
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what a program needs to make a lasting difference. And because
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this is The Animal Advocate, we'll get into the law, too, because some
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places expressly authorize TNR and others restrict
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it without ever using that word. So, let's
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start with some vocabulary. Because people get confused
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about this. A community cat is a cat who lives
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outdoors without a traditional owner. Some are friendly, maybe
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lost, maybe dumped. Others have spent their whole lives
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outside and don't want a lot to do with people. Those are the
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cats we sometimes call feral. And feral isn't a fancier word
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for stray. A stray may have lived in a home and gotten separated from
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their people. A truly feral adult cat may
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never have been socialized to humans at all, and being handled or shut in a
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carrier can terrify them. And that difference is
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important because not every outdoor cat is a candidate for
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adoption. For the ones who aren't, there's TNR,
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and the process is pretty simple. A cat goes into a humane trap
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and off to a vet. The cat gets spayed or neutered,
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vaccinated, Usually against rabies and other common feline
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diseases, and checked for health problems. While the cat's
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under anesthesia, the vet removes a small portion of the tip of
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one ear. That's ear tipping, and it works like a done
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sign. Anybody who sees that ear knows this cat's
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already been sterilized, so nobody has to trap them again.
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After recovery, the cat goes back to the spot where they were trapped.
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And notice the word is return. Nobody's dropping cats off in the
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country and wishing them luck. They go back to the territory they
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already know. Ideally, someone in the neighborhood keeps
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an eye on them from there, puts out food and water, watches for
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illness or injury, and makes sure any newcomers get sterilized
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too. Some programs call this
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TNVR, for trap, neuter, vaccinate.
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Others say TNRM, adding monitor.
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I like that one because a good program doesn't end when the cat comes back
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from surgery. You'll also hear about something that's called
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return-to-field. That's the shelter version. When
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a healthy community cat lands at the shelter, the shelter
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sterilizes and vaccinates them and sends them back to where they were
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found instead of holding them for adoption. Now, you might
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be thinking, why not collect all these cats and find them homes?
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Where that's possible, we should. A friendly cat
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belongs in a home. Young kittens can often be socialized and
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adopted, even when their mothers are feral. But
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adoption alone can't solve this, and there's 2 reasons.
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The first is capacity. Shelters are already stretched on
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space, staff, vet care, and adopters.
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Every kennel holding a cat who may never be comfortable around people
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is a kennel that isn't available for an animal who needs it. The
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second reason is the cats themselves. Think about
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it from a feral cat's point of view. You've spent years avoiding people.
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Suddenly, you're in a small cage surrounded by strange sounds,
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strange smells, and a lot of people. Some cats come
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around with enough time and patience, and some don't, and
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certainly not at the scale we're talking about. For a long time,
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many of those cats were euthanized when they came into shelters because they
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weren't considered adoptable. TNR offers
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another path. We take a healthy cat who's been surviving
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outdoors, make sure they can't reproduce, vaccinate
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them, and put them back. And the reproduction piece
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is the heart of it. An unsterilized female cat can
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have multiple litters in a year, and her kittens can be reproducing
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themselves within months. So a handful of
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unsterilized cats can keep producing kittens, many
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of whom won't survive to adulthood. That's the cycle
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TNR is trying to break. Having these colonies just
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continue to grow And/or having more and more
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cats that suffer and die on the streets. So does
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it work? This is where I want to be careful, because you can find
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people online who'll tell you TNR is the only thing that works, and
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people who'll tell you it never works. Neither one is
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really accurate about the research. There is real evidence
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TNR can bring cat populations down. There's
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also evidence that programs fail when they don't
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sterilize enough cats, or when new cats keep showing up.
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Let's start, for an example, on a college campus. At the University of
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Central Florida, researchers tracked a campus cat population for
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11 years. Cats were trapped and sterilized, and the
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ones who could be adopted went into homes. In
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1996, there were 68 cats on campus. By
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2002, there were 23. That's about
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2/3 gone, and nobody saw a single kitten on campus
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after 1995. But new
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cats kept turning up. Strays and abandoned cats kept settling
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on campus, and every one of them had to be trapped and sterilized too.
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Did the decline hold? It did. A
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2019 follow-up found the campus population had dropped
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85% from that 1996 count,
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and 11 of the 16 colonies were gone entirely.
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Now, that's just one campus with a small population and a lot of attention.
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Every program isn't going to get the same results, but it shows that
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steady sterilization, monitoring, and adoption can
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bring an established population down and keep it down.
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So now let's go bigger. A 2019 study looked at
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community cat programs at 6 municipal shelters:
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Albuquerque, San Antonio, Baltimore, Tucson,
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Columbus, Georgia,, and here in my home city in Philadelphia.
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The programs combined targeted TNR in the neighborhoods with return
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to field at the shelters. The results? Across
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the 6 shelters, the median drop in cat intake was
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32%. The median drop in euthanasia
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was 83%. Those are obviously big numbers,
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but I want to be fair about what they mean. Fewer cats coming into shelters
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and fewer being euthanized doesn't automatically mean that there
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are that many fewer cats outdoors. If a shelter starts
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returning healthy community cats instead of keeping them, of
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course its intake and euthanasia numbers change.
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So this study tells us a lot about shelter outcomes. It
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doesn't really settle the question about the outdoor
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population of cats. For that, I want to tell you
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about a study from Israel published in 2022 in the
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. So it's serious research.
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Researchers followed free-roaming cats in one city for 12 years.
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First, they ran intensive neutering in only half the city.
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And the population didn't go down. Why?
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Unneutered cats moved in. That sound familiar?
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It's a version of what happened at that University of Central Florida study,
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only now it's at a larger scale in a city. So then
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they expanded across the whole city, and once more than 70% of the
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cats were sterilized, the population started dropping, about
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7% a year. So let's think about what that tells
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us. TNR can work. A few cats
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here and a few cats there probably won't. If you're trapping
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in one neighborhood while unsterilized cats keep breeding and
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wandering in from next door, you're bailing out a boat with a hole in it.
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The researchers found one more catch. As the
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population came down, the cats who remained
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tended to live longer and reproduce more, which
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partly offset the gains. So you can't take your foot off the
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gas. So when someone asks me,
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does TNR work? I ask a question right back:
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is the program reaching enough cats in a concentrated enough
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area for long enough? So
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what are the alternatives to TNR? Option 1,
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leave the cats alone. And I don't mean feeding and monitoring a colony of
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sterilized cats. I mean letting unsterilized cats
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keep breeding with no intervention at all. Population
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grows, kittens keep being born outdoors, and many of
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them die before they're grown. Shelters keep taking in the ones who
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survive. I just— I can't see how doing nothing
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counts as a humane choice. So option 2,
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Trap the cats and try to adopt them all out. As I
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said, that's exactly right for cats who can be adopted, maybe
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strays who once had a home, and kittens who can be socialized.
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It isn't realistic for large numbers of unsocialized adult
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cats. Option number 3:
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trap the cats and euthanize them. For a long time,
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that's what many communities did. It does reduce the number of
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cats in one spot right away, and in certain isolated
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places with highly vulnerable wildlife, removal may be
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necessary to protect other species. But as a
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strategy for city neighborhoods or suburban neighborhoods,
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it raises real problems. It's expensive and
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labor-intensive. It asks the public to accept killing
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healthy cats because they live outside. And
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unless the removal is thorough and ongoing, new cats move in
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or get dumped there, and the whole cycle starts all over.
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That is a lot of killing. There's one more option
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people propose: ban feeding outdoor cats.
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There are municipalities that have tried this and, and criminalized people
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who are trying to do the humane thing. A feeding ban
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isn't a solution. It's never sterilized a single cat.
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It's hard on cats who've come to depend on regular meals— imagine that—
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and it can scare off the very neighbors who know where the cats are and
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could help them get fixed. Now, I want to take on the
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strongest objection to TNR, and that's wildlife
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protection. Cats are predators.
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You can't deny that. They hunt birds and small mammals.
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Even when they're well-fed, and sterilization doesn't change that.
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Wildlife groups, including the American Bird Conservancy, oppose
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TNR partly for that reason. Returning cats
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outdoors means they keep hunting. That's a legitimate
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concern, and I don't think animal advocates help themselves by
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ignoring it. So the goal has to be
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fewer cats outdoors over time. Colonies that
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shrink. The ASPCA supports TNR
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as part of reducing those populations, but it doesn't
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support managing colonies in critically sensitive ecological
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areas. There, it recommends relocating community
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cats and adopting out the friendly ones. That approach
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makes sense to me. A colony behind an urban warehouse is a
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different situation from a colony living in a nesting area for threatened
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birds. So, and that second situation, that's ended up in
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federal court. The American Bird Conservancy sued
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New York's Parks Commissioner under the Endangered Species Act,
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arguing that feral cat colonies at Jones Beach State Park were
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endangering the piping plovers nesting there, and they're a threatened
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species. The case settled in 2018 without a ruling on
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the merits, and under the settlement, 26 cats were
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trapped, Examined by veterinarians, and moved to sanctuaries.
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So there isn't one right policy for every location. And to me,
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the evidence we went through cuts both ways. I mean, this is a hard problem.
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I love birds. I feed
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birds on my back deck. I try to make sure that I see 10
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different bird species before I start my work for the day. But
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I also care about cats. This is a complicated problem.
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And I think the evidence shows that whether a community sterilizes
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cats or removes them, reaching only some of the cats
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means new ones keep coming. My sister always told me,
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nature abhors a vacuum. The real question
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is how to bring the number of free-roaming cats down while protecting wildlife,
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preventing suffering, and working with the resources a community has.
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So what does a good, effective TNR program look like?
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Well, the research gives us some pretty clear lessons. First,
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it's strategic. A city that hands out a few surgeries to whoever
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calls first isn't managing a population. I
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think it should find the neighborhoods producing the most kittens and the most shelter
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intake and put its resources there.
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Second, it has the vet capacity to back it up.
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There's no point persuading people to trap cats if the next surgery appointment is
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weeks out. And surgery needs to be affordable, ideally
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free, for residents helping unowned cats. Third,
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it brings in the people who live there. Neighbors know where the
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cats are, which ones are already fixed, when a new one shows
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up, and when one looks sick. Volunteers and
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colony caregivers can make an enormous difference But they need
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training, supplies, vet access, and someone to
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call when things go sideways. Fourth,
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it follows up. If you sterilize 10 cats in a colony of 15,
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that's progress, but the other 5 can still have kittens. And if
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someone dumps 3 new cats there next month, you're back at it.
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Fifth, it has an adoption track. Friendly
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cats and kittens who can be socialized should get a shot at a home,
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especially when there's foster or shelter space available.
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And finally, a good program collects data.
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How many cats are in the target area? What percentage are sterilized?
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How many kittens are being born? Is the overall number going down?
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Without that, a program can brag about thousands of surgeries
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and have no idea whether it's winning. To me,
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that's the difference between doing TNR and managing a population.
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And now we get to the part that we talk about a lot on this
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show, and that's funding. How do you pay for something like this?
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It's easy for a city to announce that it supports TNR.
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Paying for enough of it to work is another story. A
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lot of TNR is run on volunteers, nonprofits,
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donations, And vets willing to work at a steep discount.
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That work deserves credit, but it also means the size of the
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response depends on how much a local rescue group can raise.
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There are other ways to do this. Cities can fund
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community cat programs in their animal control budgets, since
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preventing litters now may mean fewer animals coming into a
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municipally funded shelter later. They can
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contract with vets for surgeries at negotiated rates. And
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states can create dedicated spay/neuter funds, as we have talked
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about, and I will drop a link to those shows in the show
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notes. As we've talked about, Maryland has an
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especially interesting model. The state collects a fee on
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every dog and cat food product registered for sale there and
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uses the money for spay/neuter grants to local governments and
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nonprofits. And it has a separate funding category just
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for unowned, free-roaming cats. In its
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fiscal year 2026 grant cycle, Maryland gave out
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just over $1 million for projects expected to provide
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more than 14,000 surgeries for pets of low-income residents
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and free-roaming cats. That kind of steady
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money lets a program plan years ahead instead of
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starting from zero every funding season. Grants
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from foundations and animal welfare groups can help launch programs, buy
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traps, train volunteers, and expand vet capacity.
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But whatever the source, the question is the same: is there
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enough money to actually bring the population down, or
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only enough for some occasional surgeries?
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After we get funding, let's talk about the law. This is where it gets interesting
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because the rules change a lot from one town to the next. Some
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places expressly authorize TNR. Some
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regulate the caregivers. Some restrict where cats can
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be fed or returned. And plenty of places have
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general rules, like bans on animals running at large or on
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abandonment of animals, that create problems for TNR
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without really intending to do so. Philadelphia is an
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example of a city that expressly permits return of feral cats.
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Its animal ordinance allows the animal control agency, after determining
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that a cat is feral, to sterilize that cat and return them to their
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colony. Philadelphia also generally exempts
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sterilized cats from its prohibition against animals running at large.
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That's significant because it recognizes the difference between allowing
20:14
unsterilized animals to roam and managing an existing
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population of community cats. Pottstown, Pennsylvania
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takes a different approach. Caregivers there can do TNR at
20:25
their own expense, but their laws actually require them
20:29
to take on specific responsibilities: vaccinating,
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ear-tipping, regular feeding, adequate shelter, and
20:36
good faith efforts to get vet care for cats who are sick or hurt.
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They also say a caregiver who returns a cat through TNR
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hasn't abandoned them. So they support
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TNR, but at the same time, they regulate how it needs
20:52
to be done. Huntington, Indiana goes a little further.
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They also say that returning a community cat to their original location isn't
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abandonment, but they expressly make TNR the preferred approach
21:03
for the city's free-roaming cats. I think that abandonment
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piece is huge. If your town wants people doing TNR, they
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need to know that putting a cat back where they found him won't get them
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charged with abandonment. Some cities haven't allowed
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TNR at all. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the city code
21:21
bars cats from running at large, including feral cats who've been trapped and neutered.
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So putting a cat back after surgery runs afoul of the ordinance.
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Volunteers there have done TNR for decades anyway, at the risk of a fine.
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In late September, the city council gave first-round approval to an
21:39
update That would change that, which tells you something
21:43
useful, advocates. Whether TNR is legal where you live
21:46
can come down to rules that never mention it. You need to check the
21:50
running-at-large rules, the abandonment rules, any feeding
21:54
restrictions, the nuisance ordinance, and anything that
21:58
might make a volunteer the legal owner of every cat they
22:01
feed. I have seen that locally. Your state's cruelty law
22:05
can come into play too. Abandoning an animal is a crime in nearly
22:09
every state, and a few states, because of that,
22:13
have written protection for TNR into state law.
22:18
PETA has taken the position, in many cities including Philadelphia,
22:22
that return-to-field programs in shelters violate the
22:26
cruelty laws because they permit abandonment. I think
22:30
maybe these, these changes in state laws have been a reaction to that, but it's
22:33
very hard for me to believe that an animal advocacy organization wants
22:37
to wholesale attack a TNR program, given what the
22:41
alternatives are. A workable ordinance,
22:45
in my view, lets people trap humanely and return cats,
22:48
protects caregivers who follow the rules, and sets reasonable standards
22:52
for vet care and management. What it shouldn't do is pile on
22:56
so many obligations that no volunteer will touch it. And
23:00
if I could tell every legislator one thing, It would be this:
23:04
authorizing TNR and funding TNR are 2 separate
23:08
votes. A city can clear every legal obstacle and still get
23:11
almost nothing done if there's no money for surgeries. So where
23:15
does all this leave us? TNR isn't magic. The evidence
23:19
says it works when it's done intensively, strategically, and
23:22
consistently, with vet capacity and neighbors who are
23:25
invested, real monitoring, And money.
23:30
And it needs a clear goal: fewer cats living outdoors,
23:34
fewer unwanted kittens being born, and better lives for the
23:38
cats already out there. So if your community is talking about
23:41
TNR, I'd ask one question: are we willing to
23:45
invest in a program that shrinks the problem over time,
23:49
or are we going to keep reacting to it one litter, one cat, one
23:53
shelter admission at a time? Those are very
23:56
different approaches.
24:05
For today's Be the Change, I want you to go read your town's animal ordinance.
24:09
I know, it's riveting stuff, but stay with me. Many towns
24:13
post their codes online, and if you can't find yours, give your
24:17
town clerk's office a call. Search for these phrases: At
24:21
large, abandoned, feed, and cats.
24:25
When you're done, you'll know whether the neighbors doing TNR in your town are
24:28
protected or exposed. And if they're exposed, you'll
24:32
know which section needs fixing.
24:37
That's it for today. The Animal Advocate is brought to you by the
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Animal Advocacy Academy. If today's episode got you
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thinking about what you can do to change things for animals, I
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for Animals. It's a free audio series I put together
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that gives you a real framework for making legislative change happen.
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You can find it at animaladvocacyacademy.com/4cs.
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That's 4 Cs, F-O-U-R-C-S.
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And you can find all our episodes and show notes at
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Until next week, live with compassion.