Trapping=TNR, No. Trapping+Managing=TNR, Yes.

There are many levels to Trap-Neuter-Return, and most of us know that a lot goes into it. It's not just about setting a trap and boom catching a cat. It's about so much more. It's about the preparation, raising the funds, figuring out transport, recovery, and lots, and lots of community outreach amongst other things. Most people talk about just the TNR part. But most people fail to talk about and do one of the most important things that comes with TNR, and that would be the maintenance.

Although the actual prep and trapping in TNR may be difficult, it's also the easiest and honestly the only thing that most people do and than they move on. However, along with the trapping you are also supposed to maintain and manage the colony. This means continually checking in on these colonies or with the caretakers to make sure the colony is being cared for properly. Sure it's awesome to trap 5oo cats or a ton of colonies, but if you aren't checking in on them and the cats aren't being taken care of, well then you're not doing the cats justice.

We continuously check in on our colonies and our caretakers and the colonies that we have taken over that others walked away from. We make sure to observe what is going on, especially with the changing seasons. At some of the colonies, we noticed that the food that was placed for the cats has been being eaten at a faster rate so we wanted to see what was going on. We know that with fall, comes raccoon season. Raccoon season is generally from November to February. We decided to place a trail camera at a few of the colonies to see if what we suspected was true, and it's also a great way to see if any new cats have joined the colony that need to be TNR'd. We placed the camera at each colony for a week so we could track any patterns. This video is one of our colony findings. We had 100's of photos that were taken, but decided to just put together a few in the video.

As you can see, at this colony we do indeed have 2 raccoons. Since raccoons primarily love fruit and nuts. We will be setting up a 2nd feeding station well away from our colony to deter the raccoon from coming into the cats' feeding area. We also want to respect the wildlife diet of the raccoon and cat food is generally not good for them. We also learned from this video that we have 3 new cats that have joined the group and come daily to just eat. So we will be putting a plan into place to get them their TNR services.

Trapping=TNR, No. Trapping+Managing=TNR, Yes.