Cat welfare advocates in Hampton have launched a new website calling for the city to change how it handles stray and feral cats.
“We’re not happy with what’s going on and [wanted] to see if we can have a discussion on a better way to handle the cats that are in the community that need help,” said Tiffany Young, president of the local nonprofit Cat Corner, Inc.
SaveHamptonCats.org was created by a coalition of animal welfare organizations including Young’s after a Facebook post by Hampton Police. The post advertised full-time cat trapping services available on request from the Hampton Animal Response Team or HART, formerly called Hampton Animal Control.
Young and others grew concerned, finding the ad “vague” and “deceptive.” They turned out by the dozens to voice those concerns to Hampton city council members in July.
“If anyone didn’t know what HART was, the name itself appears as though it’s a rescue,” Young said. “And so it would be assumed that [a cat reported to HART] is going to a no-kill [shelter] and have a happy ending.”
But Young said that’s not necessarily the case for cats picked up by HART. They get transported to the Peninsula Regional Animal Shelter, which euthanizes animals for health issues as well as space constraints and poor temperament. The shelter euthanized more than 1,100 cats in 2023.
Hampton City Manager Mary Bunting said the decision to euthanize isn’t a first choice by shelter staff.
“They will euthanize feral cats if they have to euthanize any animal, but they will not choose to euthanize healthy animals at the expense of feral cats,” she said.
Young said the result is numerous healthy feral cats and stressed strays end up dead when they don’t behave well in an unfamiliar shelter setting.
“Any cat that’s going to be trapped is going to be scared,” Young said. “You could have a very friendly cat that’s going to appear as though it is a feral cat and be euthanized when it’s not.”
The website calls for an end to full-time cat trapping in Hampton, more resources for spaying and neutering outdoor feral cats and an easier process to register colonies where cats are trapped, neutered and returned outdoors, known as TNR colonies.
Hampton’s current ordinance requires colonies be registered with the city, cats included in the colony be sterilized and for the registrant caring for the colony to seek the support of their surrounding residents.
According to Young, residents can veto a TNR colony even if they don’t live adjacent to where a colony is proposed. She said it’s part of the reason there are only three registered colonies in Hampton.
“We had a situation where a shop owner had a colony TNR’d by us, and someone down the road that wasn’t even close by [...] all of a sudden had a problem with it,” said Young. “So animal control gets knocking at his door and he’s told he has to remove every single cat that just got TNR’d.”
Facing a crowd of cat lovers, City Manager Bunting at Hampton’s July City Council meeting agreed the HART post by Hampton Police was “misleading” and that she “would never have agreed with the way that post was written.”
“The way that post should have been written was that we are offering cat trapping services for people who are dealing with nuisances caused by feral cats.”
Bunting said calls about cats causing nuisances are common in Hampton and that she has a responsibility to address them. She also voiced support for TNR programs in the city, but was adamant that such programs follow Hampton ordinance.
“If they are not managed and registered in a responsible way, that is considered the abandonment of an animal,” Bunting said, quoting an attorney general opinion on the matter.
And while Bunting emphasized that euthanasia is a “last resort,” she said the use of euthanasia is not outright opposed by the American Veterinary Medical Association in reducing and controlling the population of free-roaming cats.
“As long as our ordinance complies with a professional organization, such as the American Veterinary Association, I’m not inclined to recommend that we change it.”
Young is hopeful that city officials have a change of heart on the topic, though. Now with a new website, she aims to spread the word about the positives of TNR and advocate for a collaborative effort to manage Hampton’s cat population.
“The system’s broken and we all need to work together,” Young said. “The shelter, animal control, the other nonprofits like ourselves and other groups that want to all help the animals just need to work together and come up with a better solution that’s not broken.”
