Animal Center Awarded Grant For Feral Cat Control

Newtown-based nonprofit The Animal Center has been awarded a grant by the Connecticut Department of Agriculture under the Department of Agriculture/Animal Population Control Program’s new Feral Cat Grant Program. The grant award, valued at approximately $2,000, will provide The Animal Center with vouchers for veterinary services associated with helping to spay and neuter feral cats in the Newtown area.

“We are excited to participate in the Animal Population Control Program’s new feral cat initiative,” Monica Roberto, president of The Animal Center, said on September 12 when news of the grant was made public. “We believe this program will not only help address the leading cause of feline homelessness in our community — unchecked feral cat breeding — but will also be seen as a model program for successfully lowering feline homelessness through collaborations between government agencies and nonprofits.”

The grant, said Ms Roberto, will help expand the reach of The Animal Center’s Feral Cat Assistance Program, which has neutered and vaccinated more than 100 cats in the community since it began in March 2005. The program uses the trap-neuter-return (TNR) method, which is a full management plan in which stray and feral cats already living outdoors are humanely trapped, evaluated, vaccinated, and sterilized by veterinarians.

Friendly cats and kittens are then placed in the center’s foster program where they are socialized by volunteers and ultimately placed with loving families, while healthy adult cats too wild to be adopted are returned to their familiar habitat under the lifelong care of volunteers.

Since its inception in 1995, The Connecticut Animal Population Control Program (APCP) has been a leader in reducing companion animal overpopulation, offering spay/neuter benefits to more than 40,000 animals in municipal shelters, which has contributed to lowering pet overpopulation by 30 percent and euthanasia by 53 percent, according to Department of Agriculture reports.

“This is the first year we’ve offered feral cat grants to nonprofits,” says Frank Ribaudo, director of APCP. “We believe this feral grant program to be a first in the country, and we are pleased to provide a grant to The Animal Center because of the good work they do.”

The Animal Center is a charity founded in December 2004 focused on animal welfare.