Photo credit: Julie Sims
Courtesy of: Fix Georgia Pets

There are TNR events, and then there are the kinds of events that make you stop and think: this is what it looks like when a community actually shows up for its cats. What happened in Jasper, Georgia, on the weekend of April 11, 2026, was the latter.

The effort was organized and financially sponsored by Fix Georgia Pets, with Be Paws We Care serving as the local boots on the ground. Be Paws We Care canvassed neighborhoods, visited sites, photographed colonies, and built the relationships with caretakers that make events like this possible in the first place. Be Paws We Care’s TNR Coordinator, Angie Wiesman, personally visited every single site before the event began, so that when trap teams hit the field on Saturday morning, they weren’t going in blind.

The planning started, as good TNR planning usually does, with veterinary capacity. Fix Georgia Pets‘ Lori Trahan identified Catsnip and All the Fixins as the primary surgery providers, and once a date worked for them, everything else fell into place. Trahan then secured additional surgery sites, recruited trap team leads from across the region, rented vehicles, sourced and organized supplies, and developed the documentation framework for the event. While Be Paws We Care was canvassing the field, Trahan was building the scaffolding that would hold the whole weekend together. It’s the kind of logistics work that rarely gets celebrated but absolutely makes or breaks an operation this size.

On April 4, Trahan made the first supply run to Jasper herself. The remainder of the supplies came up with one of the team leads in the days that followed.

Pickens County Board of Education donated the space that served as the nerve center of the whole weekend. The team called it “Cat Quarters,” or CQ, a temporary sheltering hub where trapped cats would be housed, monitored, and cared for between trapping and surgery. Volunteers covered the shelves, floors, and walls with plastic donated by Home Depot and layered it with newspaper donated by Pickens Progress, turning a borrowed space into a functional, humane holding facility.

Volunteers began arriving Saturday, April 11. After orientation, trap teams prepared their vehicles while team leads met with Angie Wiesman to go over the details she’d gathered during her months of canvassing. Then the teams headed out, and the CQ volunteers got to work setting up the shelter. The first cats, a handful brought in by self-trappers, arrived not long after.

Photo credit: Ryan Kohout
Courtesy of: Fix Georgia Pets

By the time the last trap team returned Saturday night, CQ volunteers had been on their feet for hours. They came back Sunday to continue providing care and processing new arrivals. The first group of cats was transported to Community Cat Clinic of Woodstock on Sunday for surgery on Monday. The Humane Society of Forsyth County received a delivery at 8:00 a.m. Monday. All the Fixins received their first cats at 7:30 a.m. Catsnip brought their mobile unit directly to the site and performed 40 surgeries there, including three nursing mothers with kittens, without the cats ever leaving Cat Quarters. Volunteers ran two shifts on Monday to coordinate outgoing and returning animals. By Tuesday, cats not placed in foster were back in the field.

The numbers from this event are striking.

Photo credit: Elizabeth Finch
Courtesy of: Fix Georgia Pets

By the numbers:

• 190 cats officially trapped (with additional stragglers caught by team members later in the week)
• 172 surgeries performed
• 23 pregnant cats confirmed by medical records
• 7 lactating females
• 3 cats with pyometra, two of whom were also pregnant
• 23 cats placed into rescue, with potential for more to follow

Those three pyometra cases are worth pausing on. Pyometra is a life-threatening uterine infection. Without intervention, it is fatal. Every large-scale TNR event turns up cats like this, cats whose conditions would never have been discovered, let alone treated, without someone showing up with a trap and a plan.

Cats the evening before surgery at Community Cat Clinic in Woodstock, GA
Photo credit: Julie Sims
Courtesy of: Fix Georgia Pets

None of this happened in a vacuum. The volunteer corps drew from organizations across the region and beyond, with people traveling from as far away as South Carolina to participate. Groups that sent volunteers included Atlanta Humane, Big Canoe Animal Rescue, Kudzu Cat Alliance, Rockdale Cats, Cherokee Cats, and Bentwater Animal Rescue. Surgery was provided by Catsnip, All the Fixins, Humane Society of Forsyth County, and Community Cat Clinic of Woodstock.

Community support extended well beyond labor. Atlanta Humane Society donated enough dry food that every caretaker received two bags to take home. Athens Area Humane donated four pallets of canned food, so caretakers left with that as well. Atlanta Humane also donated nitrile gloves for the volunteers. Jersey Mike’s donated sandwiches so teams started their long days with full stomachs.

That last detail matters more than it might seem. Large-scale community events run on logistics and goodwill in equal measure, and the organizations and businesses that fill in the gaps are as much a part of the outcome as the surgeries themselves.

What Makes This a Model Worth Studying

Events of this scale don’t happen because one organization decides to take it on alone. They happen because someone with organizational capacity is willing to own the infrastructure, and because a local group has already done the slower, quieter work of earning trust with the people who actually care for these cats every day. Fix Georgia Pets brought the resources and the framework. Be Paws We Care brought the relationships. The caretakers showed up because Angie Wiesman had already shown up for them, repeatedly, before anyone set a trap.

That division of labor is worth naming because it’s replicable. A regional or statewide organization doesn’t have to have local relationships to run an effective large-scale event, but they do have to find a partner who does. And a local grassroots group doesn’t have to have the budget or logistics capacity to pull off something this size, but they can be the reason the whole thing works.

Photo credit: Julie Sims
Courtesy of: Fix Georgia Pets

For anyone thinking about doing something similar, the sequence matters. Secure your veterinary capacity first, then build your site list, then recruit your team leads, then fill in the support structure around them. Line up donations and in-kind support early. Make sure your holding space is set up before the first cat arrives. And don’t underestimate what it means to have a local partner who has personally visited every site and knows every caretaker by name.

Pickens County showed what’s possible when the pieces come together. The cats — 172 of them — are proof.

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This article was contributed by Elizabeth Finch. Elizabeth is an educational strategist and co-instructor for the Community Cat Program Management Certification Course at the University of the Pacific, and a team member at Community Cats Central. She also contributes to United Spay Alliance. Since 2015, she has worked in a range of roles in animal welfare, including program development, grant management, clinic operations, and community cat program support.

She is particularly interested in the behind-the-scenes work that helps programs run effectively, and in finding practical ways to support both cats and the communities around them. Through her work, she focuses on sharing real-world insights and helping others navigate the day-to-day challenges of community cat management.