Helping communities manage community cats: The work of Community Cats Central

In the US, there are millions of un-homed cats, often referred to as community cats. What is a community cat? How do people care for them? How can people become involved with those cats? Those are just a few of the questions this episode of The Hissing Feline podcast will address.

This episode features an interview with Stacy LeBaron, founder of Community Cats Central in Vermont. The organization offers a wealth of online information, training, a podcast, and other ways to help deal with community cats. 

In this episode, Stacy talks about how and why the organization was started and its outreach. She also notes the importance of veterinarians to the efforts of Community Cats Central and communities across the country. One section of the organization's website features The Community Cat Pyramid, which delineates the four aspects of decreasing community cat population.

For more information, visit the organization's website at https://communitycatscentral.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Now, here's the host of 65.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

According to a 2025 chart on the American Veterinary Medical Association website, there are estimated 76 million homed cats in the United States. But in addition to that number, there are ferals and strays. But that exact number is really difficult to pin down. There are some estimates at around 30 million, while other estimates go as high as 70 million. What is a community cat? How do people care for them? How can people become involved with those cats? Those are just some of the questions that today's podcast will address. I'm pleased to welcome Stacy LeBaron to this episode of the Histing Feline. Stacy is founder of Community Cat Central in Warren, Vermont, an organization that offers a wealth of online information, training, a podcast, and other ways to help Community Cats. Stacy, thank you very much for joining me today on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Oh, Clark, I'm thrilled to be here and always happy to talk about cats.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Could you just start by talking about the history of Community Cat Central and what prompted you to start the organization?

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Community Cat Central started back in 2016. Many folks may know of us as Community Cats Podcast. We just recently changed our name within the last year or so. And we um really wanted to just start out uh having a podcast to talk about how to support trap new to return in individuals' communities. I have been involved in animal welfare helping cats since 1994. So I ran an organization for 16 years in Newburyport, Massachusetts called the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society. And basically from 1994 to about 2014, I pretty much figured out how to reduce cat overpopulation and really have a community that celebrated all things cat, whether it is an outdoor-only cat, a barn cat, a working cat, an indoor-only cat, um a young cat, an older cat. We really worked hard at the Merrimack River Feeling Rescue Society to be very holistic in supporting the community with all things cat. I ran a mentoring program for several years, helping other communities develop these programs. And I assisted 80 groups in that program, but I had 400 groups on my waiting list. Wow. And so when I had to leave the day-to-day operations of the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society, I'm still in their board of directors, but I had an ill family member, and it's very important if you need to take time for your family. Right. It's okay to step away from day-to-day. And that's what I did for several years for my mom who had really severe dementia. And um, but I wanted to give back and I felt terrible leaving those 400 groups behind. And so I started a podcast in 2016, really sharing some of the great programs and resources that I had discovered over the years in order to solve the challenges in Newburyport, which was 300 cats on the waterfront. Um, and so with that, we just really use that as a platform to show best practices and really be supportive in a community where I think a lot of people feel very much alone.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yes, and we have at least one community cat around here. It doesn't have a collar and it just kind of goes from door to door and place to place around where we live. And so it's really, I think it's really kind of an uh a neighborhood cat. And there's a lot more to handling those types of situations than just we've got a cat in our yard, and that's the things that Community Cats Central is really involved in.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

Yes, we're I mean, we're here to help a person who has one cat in their backyard and they don't know how to support and assist that cat to, you know, a mobile home park that has hundreds of cats or, you know, a warehouse area that has hundreds of cats. Um, so we're here for individuals, we're here for organizations, we're here for municipalities that are getting a lot of complaint calls about cats. We're certainly here to help facilitate with getting lots of cats spade and neutered so that kittens are not born outside. Um, about 75% of kittens born do not make it through the first year outdoors. And so, really, one of our first and foremost desires is to get as many outdoor cats spade-neutered, ear-tipped rabies vaccinated as possible, so that then we have clear identification of those cats, that they are healthy, they're spade and neutered, they're not gonna uh be reproducing, they're not gonna be spraying. And oftentimes what happens is the community will end up adopting those cats. They will sort of absorb them because they know that they have had an investment of healthcare into and they're they're healthy cats. And it um so I've certainly absorbed cats that have been in my backyard into my house, and I think there are quite a few people out there that that do that also.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Uh-huh. Education is a really big part of Community Cat Central, and it helps organizations, uh, not just organizations, but individuals to become more aware of how to uh deal with cats and and frankly what to do with them.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Yeah, we started Trap Neuter Return certification workshops. So we offer over 32 online events uh during the course of the year. Um, but certification is really important. Um, trap neuter certification, trap neuter and return certification is really important to us because we want to be able to show our animal control officers, our veterinarians, uh the organizations that we're volunteering with that we know how to trap cats safely, we know how to transport them, uh, present them to the veterinarian in a way that they are well received. And so we try to do a lot of this uh virtual training uh ahead so that organizations aren't burdened with spending two to four hours training somebody, and then they go, Oh, I I didn't realize cats got really upset in a trap, or I didn't realize you were going to use a trap. This is something I'm not interested in doing. So we use it as like a pre-screening process for organizations that want folks that are like, I've been trained, I've taken a test, I'm certified. So I've put some time and effort ahead of time so that then the organizations know that they've got this person has vested interest in um supporting that organization as well as the cats in the community. Um, and New York City, Michigan, there are uh various communities in California and in Texas who require certification for you to get low-cost stay neuter as well as access to free trap rental for catching the cats in your backyard.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Yeah. I imagine there are some people who have the idea that, oh, this is really easy. All I got to do is trap the cat, and then I can take it to a shelter or a vet or something like that. But there's a lot more to it. You were you were mentioning there are some states that are and cities that are real specific about having certification to get these things done. There's a lot more detail and things that people need to consider before they try doing something like that.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Yeah, there's there's a learning curve. Um, and one of the things that's really important in our mind is that you know you're you're trapping in the the safest way possible for yourself as well as for the cats. So there are some people who feel like, oh yeah, I can just, you know, Mitzi rubs up against my legs, so I can just go down and grab Mitzi and put Mitzi in a carrier. And, you know, and and you know, Mitzi's not gonna want to do that, right? And so then you're gonna get hurt, Mitzi's gonna get upset, and then Mitzi's gonna be scared and you won't see Mitzi for a couple of weeks. Also, very oftentimes, Mitsi's being fed by five different families in the neighborhood. And so Mitsi's not gonna want to go into that trap with the food in it because there's four other feeders who've got food just out on a nice plate for her. So, you know, you need to be in touch with the neighbors in the community that are also feeding the cats, um, and utilizing the traps too. There's what's called trap training. So getting them comfortable going in and out of the trap without the trap being sprung, so that then when you do want to trap them, they're they're not, they don't get it so stressed out. Like sometimes they get a little agitated, especially if they don't get covered quickly with a with a sheet or a towel. Um, and so you want them kind of comfortable, pre-comfortable with that trap ahead of time. Um, and how do you make the appointment with the veterinarian? There's a lot of homework that you the more pre-work you do, the more successful you're gonna be on the back end. So we partner with neighborhood cats um on a lot of this educational um information. And if there's one document I would say to download is good is Neighborhood Cats as a TNR handbook, which is pretty much everything you need to know about how to do trap, neuter, and return safely, carefully, um, and how to work with folks in your community on that. And it's a free downloadable PDF, which I highly recommend off the neighborhoodcats.org um website, which we collaborate on these trainings together.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah, and you have a lot of material. I've been through your site uh two or three times now, and we're gonna talk a little bit about the community cat pyramid uh in a couple of minutes, but you have a lot of really good things on the site that would be helpful for neighborhoods, individuals to look at that would help them to be better prepared if they really want to get involved in this type of thing.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Yeah, and one thing I would highly recommend folks do is also check out on our resources tab. We have what's called a paper collar. Um, so say Mitzi is a new arrival in your backyard and Mitzi is friendly. Mitzi's rubbing up against your legs. Um, you can put a paper collar around Mitzi's neck with your phone number and say, who is care who owns me? I want to know. And you put your phone number there. If you don't want to share your phone number, you could get like a fake Gmail, email address or or something like that, and say, email me so that you can find out who Mitsi's owner is before you start thinking, oh, Mitsi's an abandoned cat. You know, we have to get some help for Mitzi. Um, so you need to really do some due diligence to ensure that you're not pulling a cat sort of out of the out of your neighborhood that may be owned. Um and so we usually ask that people have a paper collar on the cat for at least two weeks. Um, and then if there's no phone call, then you start thinking about what would be the next best step for Mitsi at that point in time. What's the next best pathway? And that's when you start doing your sort of air traffic control or your case manager behavior. I'm Mitzi's case manager. So how do I discover what's the best route to go for Mitzi going forward?

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Well, that's a great concept. Uh we were talking the other day uh on the phone about the kind of the benefits of people in neighborhoods uh working with a uh TNR program, something that Community Cats Central would have on their website. It actually connects people.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Yeah, yeah. So during COVID, well, yeah, we I think of cats, community cats are are the what we used to do in the past when we go to a neighbor's and you know, say, can I borrow half a cup of sugar? Well, now it's the community cats that force us to get to know our neighbors. And so you utilizing that paper collar example, um, we had during COVID, there was a gentleman who reached out to me and he was like, I've got, you know, these cats are on my back porch. And, you know, I've been working at the office, but now I'm working from home, and all of a sudden I see these cats. And so it recommended he put the collar, the paper collar on, he put a paper collar on, and he found that nine, eight other neighbors were um feeding the cat and that there were other cats, you know, involved. And they ended up um pooling their resources together, trapping those cats. They got TNR certified because they were in the New York area, so they got trap neuter return certified. Um, and they were able to bring the cats in to get them spade neutered, get them their shots. They got a left ear tip, which is a little bit of a snip off the left ear to identify a cat as being always spade or neutered. And then and it was like they became friends. And so in the summer, they started having cookouts outside. So, you know, in COVID, we all couldn't be close together, we all couldn't be indoors. So they started having parties, like block parties outside um with uh, you know, with the neighbors, and they got to know each other and they had it. And he goes, you know what? These cats, they really saved my sanity during that very stressful period of time. And I would never have gotten to know my neighbors otherwise. So, you know, we can now get our sugar from Amazon, but the cats are what create our human community in the neighborhood.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

It's amazing what cats can do for people. I mean, uh, I I might mention to somebody who has a cat. Oh, yeah, we've got two cats. Instantly, I'm friends with this person. Uh people people have these connections because of cats. I think it's a great thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah, I mean, I have lifelong friendships with people that I probably, you know, my common uh theme with them is about cats. Um, you know, I play a ton of tennis. That's another thing I do, but and these people probably wouldn't even know what a tennis ball looked like. Um, and so, you know, it's but yet we have this incredibly passionate friendship because we are all so vested in supporting the care for cats, you know, all around and for those that are caring for those cats.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Right. You also mentioned uh when we visited before how important veterinarians are to the success of your efforts at Community Cat Central.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Yeah, uh, so I've had people call me up and say, you know, Stacey, I hear you know a lot about community cats and how to have successful community cat programs. And they will ask me, you know, my vet has given me six appointments, but I'm in a city of 500,000 people, and the six appointments are like maybe weekly, maybe monthly. How can I have a successful trap neuter return program? So trapping the cats, getting them neutered, vaccinating the ear tip, and returning them back to the area that they have come from. I know, how am I how can I be successful with such a limited number of appointments? And unfortunately, I cannot say you can be successful with a program without having access to um significant volume of spay neuter appointments for cats. Cats populate three times as uh as much as dogs, so they're very good at having kittens, three to four litters a year, depending on the region of the country you live in. Um, and also depending on the region of the country you live in and the area where those kittens are born, you know, those kittens may be more survivors than the ones that might not survive that first year. So we need to set up systems with veterinarians, and unfortunately, we're faced with a significant veterinary shortage, as well as veterinarian pay has gone up over 40% since COVID. So the salaries for veterinarians are extremely high compared to what they were before um uh before 2019, um, as well as support staff. And I'm not I'm not saying that that's terrible, it's just it's a fact of life, but that means then the the costs are translated through into the spay neuter appointments. So there are parts of the country where it's $800 to get a cat neutered, $1,200 to get a cat spayed, and I think it's 60 to 63% of the population could not afford a $400 emergency veterinary bill. So um, so how do you afford an $800 neutering bill or a $1,200 spay bill for your cat if you can't even afford that $400 emergency bill? So we have to be very creative in thinking about solutions about how to work efficiently with our veterinarians to help uh support them and to work in ways maybe they can do a quick spay in six minutes rather than a 20-minute spay. So let's let's show them how to do the high efficiency spay neuter techniques and work collaboratively together. We're not gonna ask them to do more, but maybe let's learn how to work more efficiently to be able to assist more cats and support the needs of the community. Because once those cats are spayed or neutered, they're elevated in status in the community. And I think that then they have a much greater chance of having further veterinary care down the road, too.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

We're gonna take a little break, but I want everybody to stay with us uh to hear more about what Stacey LeBaron of Community Cat Central, the organization, is doing, not just where they are in the Northeast, but helping communities across the country. And we're gonna talk specifically about uh going through the four parts of the uh Community Cat pyramid. So please stay with us on the Hissing Beeline podcast.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

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SPEAKER_00 18:47

Welcome back to the His Feline podcast, a show that is everything about cats. I'm your host, Clark Greer. My guest today is Stacey LeBaron, founder of Community Cats Central. Uh in the first part of the program today, we were talking about some things that communities can be prepared to do to help the situation of community cats. What is a community cat? Are they are they feral? Are they just strays? Um how would you define these types of cats?

SPEAKER_02 19:20

So very simply, Clark, I would um define community cats as four paws on the ground outside. So that is how I define uh a community cat and how how we use it in in our definitions. So it's not a statement of temperament. Um community cats can be made up of feral cats, which are extremely shy cats. People think feral cats are aggressive, they're not aggressive at all. They are just shy. They just don't want to be close, they don't want to be around people, they don't want to feel like they're confined in a space. Um, and it it's a temperament, it's a it's a way of behavior. Um, then we have uh domestic socialized cats, which could be an owned indoor outdoor cat, it could be an abandoned cat, it could be a lost cat. Um, any cat that is outdoors, four paws on the ground, is what I call a community cat that is able to freely move out, you know, in the in the community. So pretty pretty simple.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

And and thus the reason to have that paper collar, because you'll find out if somebody owns the cat or if it's a stray uh and and it's just it's just a cat that's hanging around the neighborhood. And so that's why it's really important to do that. One of the uh one of the things that's on the uh community uh cat central website, and this is really helpful, uh I actually printed out a copy for myself uh that people can go in and print this out, and it is the community cat pyramid, and it shows the different steps. And on the side, there's a little dotted line and it talks just talks about distribution of resources. I'm guessing that's how many people it might take to uh handle the cat. Uh obviously it's economic type resources. Could you could you just walk me through that? Let's start on the bottom. It's assisting the cat-owned population.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Right. Well, if you f actually I'm gonna share a little story which really helped determine um how the community cat pyramid came about. So back in the year uh, well, in 1994, we did this big TNR project, Trap Needle Return Project on the Newbury Port waterfront with 300 cats. Um, and we had 14 feeding stations. We removed about 125 cats off in the first year, cats and kittens, and put them up for adoption, returned the rest of the cats. We had 30 volunteers feeding those cats over time, you know, carefully loving them and all of that stuff. We would Have people periodically drop off cats down at those feeding stations. So it was ending up like repopulating. So we'd have to pull those cats off and put them into an adoption pathway because we didn't want the population to grow. We wanted it to stay the same and we wanted the cats eventually to age out. So the question was, well, you know, how is it that we're getting these, I would call them Adam cats and Eve cats, these, you know, friendly cats that are being either abandoned or, you know, let out, not stayed or neutered out into the community. Um, how do we prevent Adam and Eve, you know, from having kittens outdoors? Um, and I racked my brain about this in the in the 90s. And we started a trap neuter return uh program for anybody was free, free spay neuter for any cats in trap. And we weren't moving the needle in the shelters. The the shelters were still euthanizing like half the cats that were coming through. Um, and that wasn't where we wanted to go. So I had a project also that came up in the late 90s behind a bar, and there was um a dumpster, and there were like 30 kittens in that dumpster and lots of beer bottles all smashed over the place, and that every kitten needed to have an eye removed or two eyes removed because they were just so sickly. Um, and I took a look to the left by um this um uh mobile home, and there were like 30 cats in the woods. I could see adult cats in the woods. So these were their kittens living out of this dumpster. But then through the woods, I saw an apartment complex, and that was my aha moment. They're coming from the apartment complex. That's our source. So when you look at the community cat pyramid, at the very bottom of the base is this owned cat base. That's where this all starts. That's that upstream part. If we could get all of these owned cats spayed or neutered, if we have 95% of the cats in our own environment in our in our space, if we could get them spayed or neutered, we would not be having conversations about kittens. 50% of the cats that are now euthanized in shelters are under the age of six months. And so if we can remove that population from that sheltering environment, how great would that be through spaying and neutering um owned cats? Um, and and that means community cats. So that's not indoor only cats, that's owned cats. Most people have indoor, outdoor cats, they don't have indoor-only cats. Um, and then so then we also go up in there, there is a place for trap neuter return. So that's my next level, but it starts, the base starts this big triangle. The base is all about that owned cat community. And if you get uh for every thousand cats you spay neuter and in a TNR program, if you do 4,000 owned cats, you're gonna reduce your cat uh overpopulation situation. Within three to five years, you'll be at a maintenance mode and you'll be perfectly fine. Uh up that pyramid, there's an adoption spot. We cannot adopt our way out of this. We do a great job with spaying and neutering before adoption, and I highly recommend everybody do that. But we have a lot of adoption programs out there, and we have fewer spay neuter programs than what we need. So we have a bit of a dysfunctional pyramid where we're a little top-heavy and we need to focus on that bottom layer first. And so that was my aha moment was looking from the dumpster to the apartment complex. And I want to be in that apartment complex so that the woods won't have the adult cats, and that dumpster is never gonna have those kittens ever again.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

What are the most common questions people have about community cats?

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Um, so there's concerns and then there's questions. So um when there is conflict in place, there's um usually questions about, you know, cats are getting in my garden. I don't want them in my garden. How do I keep them out of my garden? Um, the cats are putting paw footprints on my car, how do I prevent that from happening? Um, there's a cat that looks ill outside. How do I determine what I should do to support that cat? Whether it's a cat that's ear tipped and spayed and neutered, or if it's a cat that they haven't seen before that looks ill. And that's a place where I think for some states where telehealth can be really great because you can now take video of these cats outside and have some veterinary assistants helping to support what, you know, is there something I could put in the food that could be supportive to that cat, or is it a situation that I really have to bring that cat into the vet, you know, to be seen immediately? Um, so you know, it's a big project to bring a cat into a veterinarian. Um a lot of people don't understand why we have so many free roaming cats. Um there are questions about cats and birds and predation, and you know, do cats kill a lot of birds and you know, uh cats and rodents. I'll have a lot of conversations around cats and rats, um, how to handle rat overpopulation, how do cats handle rats, um, how to, you know, that's in a working cat program type environment too, but also in the cities. Chicago has a big um trap new to return mindset to help with controlling the rat population in Chicago. So there's um it also depends on, you know, whether we're talking like in a rural environment or we're talking in an urban environment. There's different challenges there for cats also.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

So the organization has really come a long way since you started it. You've implemented a lot of things, you've got a lot of helpful materials I mentioned on your website. Do you have some future plans or things you would like to do with Community Cat Central?

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Great, great question. Um, I each year I get together with our team at Community Cat Central. And when I say a team, it's really Kristen Petri, our technical tabby, who's been with me since the beginning, and um Elizabeth Finch, who is um uh another support member of our team. Um, we get together and we sort of try and look at what our themes would be. My dream is to have trap neuter return be part of our culture, um, which means that everybody would know what trap new to return means. Everyone would know how to access affordable, accessible spay neuter services for their own personal cats, as well as those that are out in the community using something like a United Spay Alliance uh spay neuter locator app that they have on their website to be able to get access to the most affordable um vet care out there. I think my personal goal is to get more involved in the private practice veterinary community to help them embrace the needs of cats. Only 20% of revenues in general practice are cat come from cat owners, 80% come from dog owners, and we really need to, you know, level that up and get more cats coming into the veterinarians and so that they can design their programs around cats rather than maybe thinking of it more as a small dog. Um, and I'm actually a co-owner of two clinics in Georgia uh called the Community Cat Clinic. So trying to rethink the model of what a veterinary practice would look like to be able to serve the needs appropriately for cats in the community with no economic euthanasia, which is another topic we could spend a whole show on, talking about the cost challenges and the fact that there are cats being euthanized because people can't afford the care for the cat. And um, you know, how can we help support um a challenging, you know, time? So our our vet clinic in Georgia refuses to do any economic euthanasia. Um, we will euthanize a cat that's suffering and that there's no alternative course. But if it's from an economic standpoint, that's just not in our in our DNA, put it that way. And um so yeah, so I'd say, you know, continuing the outreach and maybe even some more in-person events, I do consulting and we also teach a course, a community cat program management course out of the University of the Pacific, which is starting in September of 2026. Um, and that is for the people who want to be at high level. They want to run an organization that's professional and focused on reducing cat overpopulation in their community.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

What is the best way for listeners to learn more about community cats in general or what they can do to help that particular situation? Uh obviously you go to your website. Maybe you could mention your website one more time.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Yes, uh, communitycatcentral.com is the best way to reach us. That's communitycatscentral.com. Um, and um feel free to always email me at Stacy S T A C Y at CommunityCatscentral.com. Join one of our educational sessions that we have. We have uh uh so many events. It's uh really amazing. We have a feline infectious disease day, we have uh our TNR certification workshops, we have a barn cat uh relocation certification workshop, we have uh CPR, uh first aid and CPR for cats. So a whole range of different topics. We'd love to have you join our e-learning community. We're on Facebook, we're on LinkedIn, we're on Twitter, YouTube, most of our videos are up on YouTube. So uh it's just Community Cats Podcast. They are still branded with our old branding. Um, and look forward to meeting you and seeing you um at any of those locations.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

I want to especially thank Stacey LeBaron, founder of Community Cat Central, for being my guest today. This is really very informative and hopefully helpful for my listeners to understand more about Community Cats and what they can do. This has been a really nice chat today. Thanks for being on the show, Stacy.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

Thank you, Clark. This is great.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Please follow this podcast and share the program with other cat lovers. Next week, the Hip Some Feline podcast will revisit an episode with a longtime pet sitter to help you figure out perfect time.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

And remember to keep working on the Hip Feline podcast for information.