As feral cat colonies continue to grow in rural areas, Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter is deploying innovative strategies to tackle the issue.
Each year, Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter takes in about 2,000 animals — most of them cats. With feral cat populations an ongoing issue, the shelter has turned to a process called trap-neuter-return (TNR) to stem the tide.
In 2024, the shelter performed about 190 TNR procedures on feral cats. This year, it has completed 250.
“There are a lot of feral cats in Oglethorpe,” said Juli Huth, executive director of MOAS. “It is a lot of farmland, so it is hard to say how many feral cats we actually have in that county until they become a nuisance and people want them gone.”
Huth said cat colonies are especially prevalent in Lexington, Crawford and the area surrounding Watson Mill Bridge State Park. The shelter tracks hotspots around Madison and Oglethorpe counties, but data is limited to intakes.
One reason the feral cat population has exploded is due to the quick rate of feline reproduction, which is typically around two months.
Access to food is another contributing factor.
“When you have animals that you’re feeding, if they show up on your property and you’re feeding them, we start looking at ownership laws,” Huth said. “But if they’re consistently around and you’re caring for them, the most responsible thing to do is to get them fixed.”
At Oglethorpe Animal Clinic in Crawford, veterinary assistant Madison Mathews agrees the best way to reduce the number of feral cats is by having them spayed or neutered.
“The biggest issue that we probably face nowadays with cats is a lot of people just release them without having been spayed or neutered,” Mathews said. “My biggest suggestion is always trap and release and doing a spay or neuter on the cat as well, if they’re going to be out and about in the wild.”
While most animal shelters like MOAS offer free or discounted spay-and-neuter procedures for feral cats, Oglethorpe Animal Clinic does not. However, the clinic can perform surgeries on feral cats at standard costs.
Huth said MOAS can perform TNR procedures for free due to grants from nonprofit sponsors like Fix Georgia Pets and its Spay it Forward program. Still, the process is a community effort.
“If you have the money to pay for the surgery, we have discounted prices for feral cats,” Huth said. “Because we so desperately want those cats to be fixed so that they’re not reproducing and becoming a problem that then comes here.”
As part of the TNR program, MOAS rents humane cat traps for a $50 refundable deposit and encourages residents to use these traps to capture feral cats. Once trapped, residents can schedule an appointment to have the cats spayed or neutered at the shelter.
The most difficult part of the process is catching the cats.
“Our surgery schedule is pretty booked out a lot of time, but we try to work with people who are trying to do their part so that those animals don’t wind up here,” Huth said. “It’s a super simple process. The hardest part is actually trapping the animals.”
After being altered, cats receive a rabies vaccine and are ear-tipped to indicate they’ve been treated.
The cats are then sent home with the resident who brought them. Huth recommends holding the cats for at least 24 hours to ensure they fully recover before being returned to their colonies.
While most feral cats aren’t suitable as house pets, the shelter allows residents to adopt treated ferals for free.
“We’re not going to charge an adoption fee because we want them to be able to get out,” Huth said. “There’s farmlands all around, so if somebody has an issue at their barn, they can come down and get some cats. All they have to do is promise to us that they’re going to take care of them.”
Research from the National Institute of Health shows high-intensity TNR methods result in fewer deaths among feral cats, in addition to fewer births. Huth also said fixed feral cats are less destructive.
“The biggest thing that we’re advocating for is when you see one (cat), catch that one, get it fixed and then you don’t have 10 in a year,” Huth said. “If we can just stop that one on that property when it shows up, it becomes a lot less of an issue later.”