Eve Salimbene spent her career in the legal field before moving into animal welfare 26 years ago — and by her own admission, she was a dog person until she landed in Polk County, Florida. There she found a county with groups working on dogs and essentially nothing for cats: a high shelter kill rate, no low-cost spay/neuter anywhere in the county, and a year-round breeding season with none of the winter respite she’d known up north. She posted a question online asking what was being done. The response pulled her in, and in 2020 a brand-new group of volunteers TNR’d 133 cats. Six years later the count is roughly 6,700 — and the 133 looks like the tip of the iceberg.

The complication is that TNR isn’t condoned in Polk County. The Board of County Commissioners and the sheriff who runs animal control don’t believe it works, which puts Eve’s team in a strange middle space: vocal enough that caregivers know they aren’t alone, careful enough not to get shut down. Some of the people they’ve helped won’t give testimonials for fear of retribution.

Eve and Stacy dig into where the cats actually come from, why Eve believes proactive municipal investment beats two more decades of trap and kill, and what a real pilot project would need to look like. Three smaller municipalities have now approached her about running one — and she’s pushing for a five-year window with honest baseline numbers.

• Why running a law firm turns out to be decent preparation for animal advocacy
• What it’s like to lead a TNR organization in a county that officially opposes TNR
• The 2020 cohort of colonies now reporting zero kittens, years later
• Where Polk County’s community cats actually originate — and why “transient population” is the honest answer
• The tagline that reframes owned-cat spay/neuter as a community cat issue
• Municipal spay/neuter funding on the move: New York City, DeKalb County, and a statewide Texas program
• Eve’s proposed funding mechanisms, including a one-cent sales tax and corporate donors in the Tampa–Orlando corridor
• Stacy’s pilot-project challenge: designate the worst zip code, hit the volume, and watch intake drop
• Why three small municipalities may end up leading where the county won’t

Resources & Links

• Street Cat Project of Polk County
• Coalition for Animal Rights and Education in Polk County (CARE) on Facebook
• Contact Eve directly: contact@streetcatproject.org
• Community Cat Program Management Certificate — University of the Pacific, Benerd College (next session begins September 14)
• Sustainable Solutions Grant Program — United Spay Alliance
• Making the Case for TNR Certification Workshop – presented by Neighborhood Cats