The program to control and monitor feral cats in Carthage is getting new leadership.
Carthage Humane Society Director Deborah Bell told the Carthage City Council that Kelly Dodge and Vanessa Hudson will be taking over as volunteer co-coordinators of the Trap, Spay and Neuter, and Release, or TNR program in Carthage.
They replace the previous coordinator who had to leave after several months at the helm late last year.
“I’m hoping for this to be a team effort,” Bell said. This is a volunteer position, it’s a labor of love, and unfortunately, everyone has bills that come in. There are times when traps have to be set or collected and one person is at work, so hopefully the other can cover it.”
The TNR program involves training individuals who love cats to care for feral cat colonies in a way that will limit how much the feral cats roam and cause mischief.
The program traps the feral cats, spays or neuters the cats, provides them with rabies shots and other vaccinations, then tags them by notching an ear so people can see from a distance that these cats have been through the program.
Feral cats are almost impossible to domesticate once they’ve been acclimated to the wild, so these cats are returned to the colony where they were captured to live out their days.
The Carthage City Council considered ending the 10-year-old program in the summer of 2018 when it was discovered the coordinators at the time had failed to keep up with reporting the numbers of feral cat colonies in Carthage, their locations and the numbers of cats in the colonies, as required by city ordinance.
Council members decided to give the program another try with the Carthage Humane Society volunteered to manage it and bring on a volunteer coordinator.
Carthage Police Chief Greg Dagnan has said in the past that he’s seen no reports of problems with feral cats since the Humane Society took over management.
Finding Rover
Bell also told the council about a new service the Humane Society was looking to implement to help reunite lost pets with their owners.
Bell said she was working with a company that runs a website called Findingrover.com to start using a smart-phone app with facial recognition software for animals to reunite pets with their owners.
“This is going to revolutionize how we are getting pets back to their owners and also hopefully help our very wonderful (animal control) officer, Katie, do that as well,” Bell said. “It is merely an app that goes on your phone and when you take a picture of your pet, there is a 130-point face-recognition that will match with other shelters and facilities and immediately be able to find your pet in that time.”
Bell said she hoped to have the program up and running in Carthage in a few weeks and planned to distribute flyers to spread the word about the local app when it is ready.
