Community Cat Pyramid
Are you interested in making a significant reduction in the number of cats in your community? If the answer is yes, then get to know the Community Cat Pyramid. The graphic above illustrates how important the right balance of programming is to impact cat numbers.
There are four levels of the pyramid:
Assisting the Owned Cat Population
The base of the pyramid consists of indoor–outdoor owned cats and friendly community cats. This level is critical if you hope to make a meaningful impact. Community cat populations originate from owned cats, so it makes sense to direct the majority of resources toward low-cost or free spay/neuter services for cats at this level. I strongly recommend that organizations aim for well over 50% of the cats they sterilize each year to come from this base group—and the higher that percentage, the better. The good news is that these cats are typically easy to spay or neuter, as they are brought in by the public.
Trap, Neuter, Return & Return to Field
The next level up the pyramid is TNR (which includes Return to Field/RTF) cats. These cats need assistance with trapping—either through borrowing equipment or having someone come onto the property to help. TNR can be very labor-intensive. It is a necessary program, but it is also a reactive one, existing in response to abandoned cats (those from the population at the base of the pyramid) reproducing. We can reduce the need for this kind of reactive spay/neuter by focusing on the base level discussed above. The more we accomplish at the base, the fewer TNR/RTF cats we will need to address.
Rescue & Adoption
Moving up the pyramid, we reach the cats and kittens who need rescue and adoption. While it is vitally important to help as many cats and kittens as possible, the reality is that rescue, sheltering, and adoption are expensive and labor-intensive. Rescue is often the first step organizations take when they begin working with cats—but if the primary goal is to reduce cat overpopulation, rescue should not be the first priority.
Relocation & Sanctuary
Finally, at the very top of the pyramid, we have relocation, sanctuary, and adoption through “foster failure.” Many of us can relate to having one too many cats at home. We joke about how many cats each board member should have in order to qualify for an organization. We build sanctuaries for so-called “unadoptable” cats or relocate cats with behavioral challenges or feral cats to barns. These situations do occur—but they should be rare. For every thousand owned cats you help, perhaps only one additional cat should fall into this category, and even that is a high estimate.
These layers can be rearranged to fit your community's population and unique needs.
Don't know how many owned and unowned cats need to be spayed or neutered in your community? Check out the Community Cat Calculator to get an estimate.
The Community Cat Pyramid in Practice
Final Thoughts
We don’t all have to have the same mission or goals...
...but we should be clear about our organizational goals so that we can allocate appropriate resources to the correct sections of our Community Cat Pyramid.
Following this pyramid guide makes the largest possible impact in reducing the number of unwanted cats in our communities.
