05/25/2025
This is a great article. It is great the Miami-Dade Animal Control is doing Trap, Neuter, and Release! What I am hoping citizens and especially business owners, General Manager's of businesses, might do, is build little Plexi-Glass or chicken wire enclosures for a few cats, care for them , in there, and display them to their customers for adoption. Get creative !
I recommend keeping a little notebook on each kitty of their spay, neuter paperwork, if available, any vaccines they have received and when. You do a little invoice on how much you have spent on each kitty. Also, try to estimate about how much it costs, per day, for food and labor to care for them and add that onto the invoice. Everyday the kitties price will increase.
All your customers and passersbuyers will stop and enjoy the kitties playing in your enclosure, at your place of business. They will say, wow what nice/caring, intelligent, problem solving people must run this business. This is so fun and enjoyable, likely even educational, we should patronize this business more often.
So you have your little CSRP, (Caretaker's Suggested Retail Price,) or more accurately Adoption Price displayed. Ideally, the adopter will pay the full displayed CSRP and you will recoup your costs of caring for the kitty. You could, of course, wheel and deal and let an adorable little girl who loved a specific kitty have them for $5 or something because her Mother says she would get the kitty but doesn't have the $300 to $400 Caretaker's Suggested Retail Price. What a great Business Person you will be, building relationships with the community members, attracting customers to your business and helping solve society's problems by finding a homeless cats a loving home. You could offer 2 for 1 specials on those, "bonded pairs." You could have Saturday is Caturday Sales ! On your slow day, you know maybe Tuesday or Wednesday, You kick off your half price, fixed, vaccinated, all cats must go, we're overstocked, cats coming out our ears, 50% off CSRP, Cat Extravaganza Event Sale !!
I really think people will pay when you show/display the costs you have incurred preparing the cats for adoption. They will know that by paying, they are helping you repeat the process of fixing, vaccinating, getting some additional, veterinary care, if needed, and finding a loving adopter for the cats. Even if you lose money, per cat, I imagine it should be a tax write off. (Ask your tax professional or visit the IRS website for more info.) It should attract customers to any business. It should bring alot of fun and joy.
I really like the idea, of it being done this way, for many reasons. People, as mentioned in the article love and have a lot of concern for the community cats. If you take them to a shelter or even better a rescue, to concerned persons, the creatures are just mysteriously missing, unless you have communicated to all interested parties. If you put them on display, in an onsite enclosure, where found, concerned parties little by little notice them in there and word gets around. Even pets may get out of their homes, wander to a business, get picked up by someone, and it's better they get displayed in an onsite enclosure than taken to a rescue or shelter many miles away. Microchips, collars, and tags are a great help, consider those as a special feature that may come with your cats, List the value, on your CSRP Invoice. You may help reunite missing cats with their owners using the onsite/ enclosure system. Also rescues and shelters can become quickly overwhelmed, give them a little breather, it just make sense to keep animals as close to where found as possible.
Apartment buildings could do this, Homeowner's Associations, warehouses, Government buildings, groups of neighbors, anyone, anywhere. We can make it fashionable, and fun to help and adopt Community Cats. The more the merrier and the more effective it will be.
A Miami-Dade commissioner recently filed legislation to ban the feeding of stray animals but ultimately revoked it amid backlash.
