Nebraska Humane Society creates program to protect, control cat population

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - The Nebraska Humane Society has created a new program that protects and controls the population of community and stray cats that live throughout the metro.

“Not all cats are indoor cats and a lot of people have a hard time accepting that but that’s reality,” said Ben Clark, a volunteer with the NHS Community Cat Program.

“Who knows how many are truly out there but there’s quite a few,” said Monica Vazquez, the program coordinator.

Across the city there are hundreds, maybe thousands of community cats.

“Meaning they are an outdoor cat or part of a colony, most of them aren’t adoption candidates due to behavior issues,” Vazquez said.

Vazquez began leading the Community Cat Program shortly after NHS started it last September.

She says if a stray or feral cat is brought into NHS, they’ll spay or neuter it, vaccinate it, and clip their ear to indicate they’ve been cared for. After that, they return those cats back to where they were found.

“There have been programs in place for a long time where feral cats would come in and be euthanized because they weren’t adoption candidates, so this is helping with decreasing their population over time and putting them back out to live their lives in the community where they happy and thriving,” Vazquez says. “We’ve done over 350 spays, neuters, and returns so that’s over 350 lives we’ve saved since September.”

“As soon as I got wind that this program was going to be implemented, I was right there knocking on the door saying ‘I’m here, I want to make sure this program is going to work,’” Clark said.

Clark is the program’s sole volunteer. His main duty is to return the cats to where they were found after they’ve been cared for by NHS.

Along with having his own personal cats at home, Clark also is a caretaker for a colony of cats in his area. Right now, there are more than 170 registered community cat caretakers across the metro.

“I started out just providing just food and water for some free-roaming cats in our neighborhood,” Clark said.

He explains that one cat in the colony had several litters of kittens. Each time she did, Clark would trap the kittens, and bring them to NHS to be cared for and adopted out. After the third litter, he realized the litters would keep coming.

He captured the cat, brought her to NHS to be spayed, and later returned her to her life in the neighborhood. Now, the Community Cat Program does this regularly.

And while the cats survive and thrive outside, they still partially rely on the humans they live near.

“Without the community support, a lot of those cats are going to either have a hard time finding food, shelter, or they could have injuries that aren’t going to have medical attention,” Clark said.

The new program also provides resources such as education, free cat food, and help creating shelters for those who are caretakers in the community.

Vazquez and Clark recognize there are likely many more caretakers than the 170 who are registered with NHS, however.

For information on becoming a registered cat colony caretaker, click here. To become a volunteer with the program, or with NHS, click here.

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