No need for new Thornton cat tactics, council agrees

City to sit tight after 2022 community cat trapping program

BY LUKE ZAREZECKI LZARZECKI@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Cats roaming ornton neighborhoods may continue to be a nuisance to property owners, but it’s not one the city needs to x right now. ornton City Council was presented with a new option for how to deal with feral cats at the March 7 planning session but decided to sit tight. Sta said that was a good choice.

“From my standpoint, no I don’t feel that it’s a problem,” Animal Control Supervisor Janice O’Brien said.

Northglenn City Council approved the Shelter-Neuter-Return program, in 2022 that allows residents to trap “community cats” and bring them to the Riverdale Animal Shelter where they would then be sterilized and vaccinated. en, they would be returned back to the same neighborhood they came from.

At the time, councilors were told it would reduce disease in the cat community and x some other less problematic behaviors.

O’Brien said sta explains what a resident’s options are, which can be to leave the cats alone, work with the cats or take them to a shelter.

In some situations, the city will trap them and take them to a shelter. Animal control doesn’t proactively trap cats, she said.

“ ere have been a couple of communities where truly, a whole neighborhood does want them,” O’Brien said.

e March 7 discussion was triggered after a resident wrote to councilors about the problem with feral cats. O’Brien said she doesn’t see it as a problem because most of the cats the city has handled in 2022 had owners and were not feral, just allowed to roam. Of the 470 cats found or trapped by Animal Control, only 13 were classi ed as feral, according to O’Brien.

O’Brien said ornton city code doesn’t allow domesticated animals to be habitually at large. Right now, residents can contact animal control who will explain options for how they can deter cats from their property. Trapping and removal is the last resort.

e new solution o ered to the city council was to allow a private organization to trap feral cats, have them neutered and then return them to the neighborhood where they were trapped.

O’Brien said that sta doesn’t recommend that change and Police Chief Terrence Gordon agreed. He said those programs are not usually e ective.

“Reintroducing these cats does nothing to curb what we are responding to now, which is citizens calling about cats,” he said.

Gordon said that research on trapneuter-release programs is “spotty” and that for the city to have an e ect on the population of cats, between 70% to 90% of the cats would need to be captured and neutered. Even then, it doesn’t get to the heart of the problem.

“Feral cats typically lead horrible lives, so now we are reintroducing a neutered version to continue that horrible life,” he said.

City Councilor Eric Garcia said he doesn’t see that many in ornton.