I Like Minneapolis (and St. Paul)!

Photo of Minneapolis by IrishFireside. Photo of cat and child by kevin dooley

I like Minneapolis because the city council are debating a change in the city’s attitude on controlling stray and feral cats. At the moment the policy is:

Catch and Kill stray cats, while at the same time..
prosecuting citizens who feed and neuter stray cats (i.e. Joy Mattice spent $1000s of her own money providing a public service and was still criminalized – weird).

The policy might change to the classic trap-neuter-return (TNR). The effectiveness of TNR has been widely debated itself. Supporters of TNR are cat and animal lovers and the opposition are bird conservationists (American Bird Conservancy). The ever-present battle.

However, the reason for the serious debate on the change is based on cold facts. This is not an emotional decision-making process. The facts support TNR:

TNR has reduced by 26 percent the number of impounded cats in neighboring St. Paul. I presume that means that there are less cats wandering around the streets, and;
TNR is cheaper than euthanasia. Spay and neuter cost $40 to $50 per cat, while killing a cat humanely cost $100 and;
The 125 year old catch and kill policy of Minneapolis has achieved nothing….

“They’ve been killing cats in Minneapolis for 125 years, and the problem is getting worse, not better,” he said. (Mike Fry, the executive director at Animal Ark).

It appears that City Council Member Cam Gordon is promoting this change in policy. Well done to Cam Gordon.

Personally, I’d be thrilled if Minneapolis adopts a TNR policy. We have to praise St. Paul as well who have proved that TNR works. This is very important because a lot of people don’t like kind ladies feeding stray cats while they are being spayed and neutered. I understand the concerns because feeding stray cats attracts other wildlife.

However, under the proposed policy people who feed cats will no longer be criminalized. These people can apply to the city authorities to feed and trap cats provided the cats are taken to a non-profit for sterilization, which seems an enlightened approach to the stray cat problem, to me, as it harnesses the energies and concerns of the decent citizens of Minneapolis.

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Comments

I Like Minneapolis (and St. Paul)! — 7 Comments

Leah on March 10, 2013 at 4:58 pm said:
The sounds like fantastic positive news I love it when a state see’s sense because theres always a good chance that others will follow 🙂
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- Michael on March 10, 2013 at 5:56 pm said:
  Yes, I’d love to see other states follow on purely financial and pragmatic grounds.
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Rose on March 10, 2013 at 2:20 pm said:
This is great news,TNR can certainly be very effective,there is no need to take the life of unfortunate cats.
I hope and pray this policy comes to pass.
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Marc on March 10, 2013 at 9:09 am said:
I can’t believe how much it costs to put a cat to death. I am glad it’s expensive. It bloody well should be. I guess the chemical costs alot or something. That is really something that works in everyones favour. If it were really cheap there would be less hope for TNR. Hopefully this will set a good example for other places to follow. There will always be cats, whether they are different cats or the same cats. Better to have the same ones stay and live a good life in my opinion. And the whole thing about being criminal for helping them is beyond the extremes of absurdity.
I’m just glad it costs a fortune to kill them.
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- Michael on March 10, 2013 at 12:00 pm said:
  Agreed completely. Yet there are places that still gas cats en masse. They do it with carbon dioxide as far as I remember. It is a terrible death. No doubt the process is designed to save money.
  Here is a post on the subject (there are more):
  https://pictures-of-cats.org/the-gassing-of-feral-cats.html
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Ruth aka Kattaddorra on March 9, 2013 at 3:42 pm said:
It’s so good to read something positive about the treatment of stray and feral cats for a change and I hope this TNR happens in Minneapolis. It’s been proved it works in St Paul and in other places too but I think to some people a cat’s life isn’t worth the bother of TNR when they can simply kill them.
Well now money has entered into it as it’s found that it’s cheaper to TNR a cat than kill him/her, maybe other cities of the USA will follow suit because money seems to be the God of a lot of authorities over there.
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- Michael on March 9, 2013 at 4:59 pm said:
  Thanks for the comment Ruth. This is the first time I have seen city statistics that strongly supports TNR on a factual a basis including money, the biggest motivator of all. I think this is important.
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