Licking County TNR

10/16/2026

Today is

Not all community cats are feral, but all community cats appreciate any kindness you can show them. They didn't choose to be community cats, people chose that life for them making them innocent victims of life.

To learn how to help these cats here in Licking County, our next orientation is tomorrow morning, Oct. 17, 2026 from 10:30-12:30 at the Utica Church of Christ fellowship hall.

It’s here! Happy Global Cat Day and National Feral Cat Day! 🌎🐈

To make a lifesaving impact, Alley Cat Allies is calling on people around the world to take positive action for cats in their communities. This is the biggest day of advocacy and action for cats, so let's get to it!

Donating to Alley Cat Allies is a great place to start. And today, your Global Cat Day Gift will be 2X-MATCHED ➡️ https://secure.alleycat.org/page/103097/donate/1

Then, throughout the day, we encourage advocates to go out in their communities to take action and share their impact on social media with and . Learn how you can join in at alleycat.org or GlobalCatDay.org!

For our part, Alley Cat Allies will be on the ground today providing cats with Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), no-cost cat food, access to care, and other critical support. We're eager to share updates from the field! ✨

10/15/2026

FREE in-person community cat conference next month if anyone is interested. Lots of good knowledge and experience about community cats on the agenda.

10/12/2026

Excellent post about the importance of acclimating cats when relocating them. We discuss this in orientation, but it's a good reminder.

10/12/2026

The The Animal Care Center at Granville is officially part of our voucher program! They are able to provide spay/neuter, rabies vaccine, pain meds and eartip for unowned community cats through our voucher program as part of their regular surgery days. Appointments must be scheduled in advance, cats must be in live traps and caregiver must provide the voucher number when scheduling.

If you're not part of our program and would like to learn more, our next orientation is Saturday, Oct. 17th from 10:30-12:30 at the Utica Church of Christ fellowship hall.

10/10/2026

Clinic Day and apparently the black cats of Licking County decided to make it their day. We had 31 cats checked in and 12 of those cats were solid black. Another 9 cats today were black with white markings. So only 10 of the 31 cats were anything other than black or mostly black cats (tabbies, gingers, a calico, a gray and white and a solid gray).

Thank you to our lunch angel, Pat Armstrong. The chicken alfredo and mushroom lasagna with salad and sun chips was a perfect lunch with chocolate chunk cookies for dessert.

Dr Sipka was a star, not only did she roll through 20 neuters and 11 spays with Sara as her surgery assist, she performed entroprion (eyelid) surgery on a tom who'd suffered through chronic infections to give him some relief. She also helped the black kitten a Good Samaritan found and trapped at Newton Elementary by getting it a spot at the

Registered Vet Tech Alyssa kept clinic flowing with help from Erin, Courtney and Robin had their hands full on recovery and Alice made sure paperwork got completed. In total we had 9 volunteers helping at various points today, spending their Saturday improving the lives of community cats.

Today's clinic represents 13 people who spent their Friday getting these 31 cats in traps, driving them to clinic this morning by 9 am and then coming back to pick them up this afternoon. Several of them had upper respiratory infections they got extra meds for, a couple had tapeworms that we were able to treat and, of course, the guy with the entropion.

We also want to shout out to Licking County Humane Society, Citizens for Humane Action and Whiskers who have taken in a few kittens and cats who were suffering outside and may not have survived the winter.

10/06/2026

Our last two orientations of this year are being held in communities outside of Newark. Saturday, October 17th will be in Utica, Ohio and SUNDAY, November 8th will be in Buckeye Lake, Ohio.

No pre-registration is required. Anyone is welcome to attend to learn more about community cats in Licking County. Attendance at one orientation is required before being able to access Licking County TNR resources.

10/03/2026

The Girl Scouts dropped off more shelters that they made as part of their merit badge work. Message us if you want one for your community cats.

09/29/2026

Our monthly orientation is open to anyone who wants to learn more about Trap-Neuter-Return and is required for people interested in accessing our resources to help fix unowned community cats in Licking County. It covers best practices for colony managment, basic trapping techniques and how our Trap-Neuter-Return program works with caregivers.

They've primarily been held on Saturdays at the Newark Public Library downtown but we've had some requests for different locations and different days. October's orientation will be in Utica on Saturday, Oct. 17th. The volunteer who runs orientation works through the week so Saturdays or Sundays are the only options.

Is there someone willing to organize a location available on a Sunday afternoon in November that could hold 20-25 people somewhere in Licking County?

09/27/2026

Interesting study regarding the actual impact of community cats. Humane management of the population is critical but they're not as detrimental to the environment as has been suggested.

A recent study in Australia exonerated cats for the wildlife harm they were being falsely blamed for. Researchers analyzed 11 years (2013–2024) of wildlife rehabilitation records in Australia, covering 52,475 individual animals from 158 threatened species.

Human and human activities were responsible for most known wildlife harm, followed by extreme weather events (which might also be human-related). Notably, other animals represented just 4.4% of all wildlife injuries, with cats representing a minority of those (0.6%). That is 315 of the 52,475 injuries, and does not account for the fact that cats are scavengers and may have come across wild animals already injured for other reasons (e.g., human caused harm).

The study concluded that while public debate across the US has disproportionately emphasized free roaming cats as a “conservation threat,” that debate is incorrect.

In addition to falsely blaming cats, it overlooks more common and potentially preventable human causes of wildlife injury. The analysis finds that most harm is associated with human-modified environments, including hazardous infrastructure, roads, entangling materials, poisons in the environment and habitat fragmentation because of development.

Another new study reported similar results. It examined hunting behavior among 2,400 semi-owned/free roaming cats. The researchers were interested in testing whether widely cited estimates of free roaming cats killing “61–118 million birds annually” were accurate. They were not!

Researchers found that roughly 8 out of 10 cats — 77% — didn’t hunt, while only 23% hunted sometimes or often, and focused mostly on insects. Birds were the least commonly reported prey, resulting in a figure over 300 times lower than reported by cat-killing advocates. Once again, being scavengers, cats could have come across many of the birds, who were already injured/killed for other reasons, such as crashing into windows.

Despite the growing scientific consensus that cats are not to blame for species decline and that calls to eliminate them “by any means necessary” is “wrong and fuels an unwarranted moral panic over cats,” it is not likely to change policies toward them by government agencies and organizations pursing a “native-species” agenda.

When nativists and bird watchers call for killing cats, they are not motivated by saving birds or wildlife. Instead, they are motivated by a hatred of cats.

Published in part by Nathan Winograd on Substack.

09/26/2026

What a day! The weather cooperated yesterday and we had nearly 40 cats checked. We actually only fixed 29 of them: 2 were medicals and we had 6 kittens that turned out to be too young/too little for surgery (even doing pediatric spay/neuter, females need to be 2 lbs for safety). We also had one that turned out to be an already neutered boy (no microchip).

It still felt like a long day with all of the girls and medical cases, but our small crew got it done. Dr Fredley was our veterinary surgeon with Amanda as surgery assist, Alyssa as our Registered Vet Tech, Robin floating between induction assist and recovery and Sara handled recovery mostly by herself with Alice handling paperwork with a stint as surgery assist when Carrie arrived to take over paperwork.

The very first cat on the surgery table this morning turned out to be a female with a pyometra (serious uterine infection). Caregiver noted that she had kittens earlier this week but all of the kittens died within hours and she had continued to bleed all week. They managed to get her into a trap and brought her in. She was spayed, got some extra meds and in a couple of days she'll be feeling much better.

Not long after that, we had a boy getting prepped for a neuter and our Registered Vet Tech, Alyssa, noticed a wound on his paw that turned out to be a broken leg. The tissue around the wound was already necrotic so the decision was made to amputate the leg along with his neuter. He had to have been in pain for weeks but had concealed it well, the caregiver hadn't noticed him limping. She was able to use a cage borrowed from our program to set him up for a few extra days of cage rest as he recovers from the surgery.

Thanks to our Lunch Angel, Tricia Weimers. The chili, mac and cheese with cornbread and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies were the perfect lunch for a fall day.