Hempstead Town expands feral cat trap-neuter program

In an effort to control feral cat populations in Hempstead, the town has expanded a program to neuter those cats and return them where they came from, town officials announced Tuesday.

The town’s animal shelter will now accept cats for its trap, neuter, release program five days a week — up from four — and once a week, a mobile veterinary van will visit a different community to pick up cats.

“The mobile TNR program is about more than just reducing the number of stray cats, it's about improving the quality of life of our residents, our neighborhoods, and the animals themselves,” Town Supervisor John Ferretti said at news conference in Rath Park in Franklin Square last week. “We can stabilize their populations, prevent overbreeding, and reduce the strain on our animal shelter.”

The town will be sending out its mobile veterinary surgical van for the first time in years. The van was purchased in 2015 and has been used at the shelter as additional space for surgeries, town spokesman Casey Sammon said in a text message. Sammon said the town’s shelter generally performs “nearly 5,000” neuter operations in its program every year.

Town officials said feral cat populations have been growing recently, but they did not provide any statistics about the number of feral cats in Hempstead.

“There’s no true statistics as to how many cats are out there,” said Sylvia Ottaka, senior director of rescue and community outreach at the North Shore Animal League America in Port Washington. “We’ve seen more cats out there, more community cats out there.”

The term community cats is often preferred to feral cats by animal advocates.

“Due to the pandemic, we have seen the numbers rise,” Ottaka said. “When we were in the pandemic, veterinarians were closed, a lot of programs were closed.” North Shore continued its trap, neuter, vaccination and release program during the pandemic, she said.

Hempstead rents traps to residents — the cost is fully refundable when the trap is returned — who then bring the trapped cats either to the shelter or to one of the sites where the mobile veterinary surgical van visits. The schedule for drop-off times at the shelter, as well as the changing locations for the van, are on the town’s website, which can be found at hempsteadny.gov.

Residents aren’t charged for Hempstead’s service. Surgeries are performed in the van and the cats recover at the shelter before being returned to the locations where they came from, Sammon said.