The feral cats of Christopher Newport Park in downtown Newport News, Virginia, USA, are well established and under the care and management of a TNR program run by volunteers who place no burden on the city authorities. Yes, as is often the case, the volunteers take the financial burden of caring for the cats off the city and have been doing so for several years we are told. The city should be pleased and grateful but the recreation superintendent denied their application to register their TNR programme.

Christopher Newport Park. Photo: Google Maps.

As is commonly encountered, this city official and perhaps other officials want to trap and kill the cats because they have plans to improve the park which means removing the vegetation where the cats live.

With the intention of trying to force the city administrators to take a more humane course of action a petition has been started. It is the source of information for this article.

The park improvements are part of the city’s Downtown Vision Plan. There is little ‘vision’ in a plan to kill cats when there are alternative, more human methods of dealing with them.

This is a classic case of the citizens of a city, ‘ordinary people’ who are decent-minded and who care about animal welfare and understand that feral cats are innocent victims of human carelessness, pitted against the pale and male administrators of a city who have little sensitivity towards the plight of feral cats, a human problem.

Please share this post and try and get people involved to save these cats from being euthanised at a ‘shelter’.

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