KSHB 41 reporter Grant Stephens covers stories involving downtown Kansas City, Missouri, up to North Kansas City. Share your story idea with Grant.
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Animal welfare groups in Kansas City are ramping up efforts to control the city’s feral cat population through trap-neuter-return (TNR) programs. However, a shortage of volunteers and a lack of funding continue to hinder progress.
Rachel, a longtime volunteer, is known as the Cat Lady of Kansas. She regularly receives pleas for help from residents.
“There’s always someone saying, 'I need help.' There’s all these cats,” she said.
Rachel leads a TNR program with the Heart of America Humane Society and partners with local clinics to spay and neuter feral cats.
“This has been terrible. I mean, just the last year, the last 365 days, the program that I lead with Heart of America, we have fixed over a thousand community cats, and we’re still just drowning,” she said. “It’s volunteers like me that are doing the heavy lifting.”
Kansas City Pet Project CEO Kate Meghji said removing cats from an area without addressing the root cause can actually worsen overpopulation.
“When you’ve got a population that’s sustaining in an area, there’s enough resources for them to live,” she said. “If you take some of them away, all of the sudden, you’ve got more resources for fewer cats. Guess what happens when you have more resources for fewer cats? They procreate more quickly. And so you actually sort of have a negative effect on the population.”
TNR aims to sterilize cats and return them to their colonies, reducing reproduction while allowing stable groups to remain. Meghji said KC Pet Project is mapping “hot spots” for colonies and looking to increase the frequency of TNR surgery days.
“We have traps that we will rent out for deposit, and then, right now, currently, once a month, we do a TNR surgery day," Meghji said. "My goal is to ramp that up more as staffing and population allows for that."
KC Pet Project also plans to grow its kitten foster program before next spring’s peak breeding season.
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“So over the wintertime is when we sort of catch our breath a minute and then start preparing for the next kitten season,” Meghji said. “So my goal by next spring is to grow our kitten foster program pretty significantly.”
Rachel stressed that controlling the problem will require broader community involvement.
“The overpopulation of community cats is a community problem; it is a people problem,” she said. “If you are feeding an outside cat, you need to fix it. There are so many resources, you just got to go on the internet and search for it.”
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