| I’m not particularly interested in cats. Nevertheless, over the past year, my algorithm has been flooded with a very specific kind of person, doing a very specific thing: women, setting traps in their Brooklyn backyards, apparently to lure in infirm cats. I accidentally absorbed enough of this content to learn that these women were practicing TNR, or trap, neuter, release — a humane way to ensure feral street cats can no longer create a million more feral street cats. This all seemed like a lot of work! We asked writer Molly Osberg to spend time with a few volunteer rescuers, who devote their lives to this practice, to find out what it really looks like. As it turns out, it’s even more work than we could have imagined. And for all of that work — one woman has a full cat room, with a drain in the middle, and when Molly interviewed her she was giving a litter of kittens daily hand-mixed sulfur lime baths for ringworm — it may only be making a dent in keeping the city’s population of feral cats at bay. |
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