Feral Friends receives boost from Jean Sainsbury Trust

We’re delighted to announce that we have been successful in receiving a £5,000 grant from the Jean Sainsbury Animal Welfare Trust towards our Feral Friends programme, also known as our Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) scheme.

Our Feral Friends project is a critical part of promoting good animal welfare. The scheme significantly minimises the risk of feral cats reproducing and spreading serious diseases across our Branch area, as well as rehabilitating kittens ready for adoption. The project is volunteer-managed and requires a team of experienced animal welfare experts to respond to callouts several hours throughout the month.

Funding will be spent on veterinary costs such as microchipping and neutering fees, equipment (to humanely trap, neuter and then release feral cats back to their natural colonies) as well as fuel to get us round to some of the colonies in the further reaches of our branch area.

The population of a feral cat colony can quickly get out of control. If left alone to breed, one male and one female cat can quickly multiply into over 2,000 kittens over a 5 year period. On average, we treat and neuter 48 feral cats from up to 20 different colonies each year, and re-home approximately 37 feral kittens through the programme throughout a 12-month period, meaning we’ve saved over 49,000 unwanted kittens from being born to feral colonies over the next 5 years –  through the project’s operations in the last year alone. 

The need for our Feral Friends project is huge, and our small team does everything they can to keep up with demand. Grants such as these help to relieve some of the financial pressures associated with the project, and allow us to continue offering a much-needed expert-service to the local community. Huge thanks to the Jean Sainsbury Animal Welfare Trust for their generous donation!