Rescued kittens
Marcy Domen is an animal lover. She had cats as a child growing up in central Pennsylvania, and says they still have a special place in her heart.
When she moved back to the area about 15 years ago, she discovered a litter of kittens in the yard of her Mechanicsburg home. She listed them on Craigslist to try to find them new homes, and another site user reached out asking if she had heard about using the “Trap Neuter Return” (TNR) strategy to help control outdoor cat populations.
Thus began Domen’s work to learn about, promote and educate others about TNR in Mechanicsburg and surrounding communities.
TNR is a comprehensive strategy to humanely address outdoor cat populations and has been adopted by communities across the United States. TNR volunteers capture feral cats so they can be spayed or neutered and vaccinated and then returned outdoors.
The TNR approach “prevents suffering among the cats, protects public health, reduces stress on wildlife, and enables communities to redirect desperately needed resources elsewhere,” according to the Nobody’s Cats Foundation, which coordinates and implements TNR in 15 southcentral Pennsylvania counties.
Domen volunteers on behalf of Nobody’s Cats as a TNR coordinator and educator, and in 2022, she started a separate Facebook group, Mechanicsburg Community Cats, to help further educate the public about TNR and provide support for local communities. The page has more than 3,500 members and many more regular visitors, she said, showing a high level of interest in the issue.
Cats are by nature domestic animals, Domen said, and they vary in their levels of socialization to humans.
“All cats born outside are lost or abandoned pets or the offspring of them,” she said.
Male cats will travel long distances to find a female in heat, Domen said. The average female cat that hasn’t been spayed has at least two litters of kittens per year, and can have up to four, she said, which means the cat population in a neighborhood can grow quickly.
Domen remembers the first such situation she assisted with in Mechanicsburg.
“I was contacted about a man who lived downtown,” she said. “People were seeing kittens in his yard and being hit in the road.”
She knocked on his door and told him she could help, and the man started to cry. His mother had owned just three cats, he told her, and, within two years, he had 36 living in his yard.
As part of TNR, volunteers feed and provide shelter for the released cats, allowing them to live comfortable lives without producing an uncontrolled number of kittens. This feeding and sheltering piece is important, Domen said.
“If you stop feeding, they will spread out into the community and get into trash,” she said.
Several local townships have recognized the benefits of TNR, and many now even provide vouchers for spay/neuter services. Some municipalities have also changed their ordinances to allow feeding and sheltering of outdoor cats that have been through the TNR process, activities that had previously been prohibited. Domen and Nobody’s Cats continue to work with local municipalities to encourage these types of changes.
Cats that are returned through TNR programs have their left ears clipped and flattened, a universally recognized sign, Domen said.
“Whether you love cats or hate cats, TNR is the best approach,” she said. “It’s healthier for the cats and the community.”
Domen estimates that she has helped trap and return close to 1,000 cats in Mechanicsburg and surrounding townships, and, in the process, assisted hundreds of people.
She said that her ultimate goal is to let people know they don’t have to try to tackle a cat population issue on their own.
“People often feel overwhelmed, but there are resources available,” she said. “Don’t feel like you have to tackle it on your own, there are people who can help. The more we can educate, the better off we are.”
For more information about local Trap Neuter Return resources, visit www.nobodyscats.org.
Mechanicsburg Community Cats is on Facebook.
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