Feral cats are not socialized to people, so they're wary of us and cannot be adopted. They have a home—the outdoors.The way we can help them is to Trap-Neuter-Return. TNR ends reproduction, stabilizes colony populations, and improves their lives. The behaviors and stresses associated with mating—pregnancy, yowling, spraying, and fighting—stop. Neutering a sufficient percentage of the cats breaks t
he reproductive cycle, and the combination of sterilization, adoption, and attrition can gradually lead to a reduced population. In addition, nuisance behaviors decrease substantially with TNR. Noise from feral cats, including yowling and fighting, is largely attributable to mating behavior. Mating behavior is obviously eliminated with sterilization. The strong odor associated with feral cats comes from testosterone in the urine of unaltered male cats. Neutering eliminates that odor. Altered cats also roam much less, causing them to be less visible.
