TNR Really Makes a Difference!
In early July Safe Haven of Iowa County was contacted by a sweet little lady living in a trailer court. She had two feral, young cats show up at her trailer last winter. She made a wonderful winter shelter for them and made sure to feed and water daily – like so many caring people do, this lady was happy to meet their needs through the winter and enjoyed seeing them thrive. Now the reason she reached out for help is that naturally her cute little cat family of two had grown to seven with the delivery of two litters of kittens this spring.
So a couple Safe Haven volunteers decided to tackle this quickly growing cat colony! After setting out two traps near the feeding station, and feeding in the traps that were zip tied open for a week – we then began to do the actual trapping.
The first day was quite productive – we caught 1 momma cat, and in the second trap we caught TWO kittens! By the end of the week we had all seven cats captured, spay/neutered, vaccinated, and ear tipped through Iowa Humane Alliance.
All seven cats have been returned to the trailer court where the lady is continuing to care for them – and is so elated to be caring for only seven, because she quickly realized the number could easily double again by next winter. 
Most people that reach out for help in these situations started out with great intentions of helping a stray kitty, but our mission is to help educate the people in our community that in addition to food and shelter, we need to be proactive and get ahead of the population boom and get our community cats spayed/neutered – and Iowa Humane Alliance makes this possible. What an amazing asset we have right here in eastern Iowa to help with this mission – by providing high-quality, low-cost services, thousands of community cats are spayed/neutered each year! We are so lucky to have this service and would not be able to tackle this mission without them!
~ Kimberly Buresh, Safe Haven of Iowa County
