North Carolina Residents: Tell Your Representatives to Let Shelters Make Lifesaving Decisions for Cats

This action is ONLY for residents of North Carolina

Update 5/3/2019:

Great news! HB808 has been passed by the House Committee on State and Local Government. It is now with the House Committee on Rules, Calendar, and Operations.

However, the bill was amended. Instead of allowing shelters to do RTF, the bill has been amended to allow shelters to return animals to an animal advocate group instead. It has also been amended to allow counties in the state to establish their own disposition options. While RTF would have been better, these options are still giving animal shelters the flexibility to ensure cats get back to their outdoor homes rather than killed.

Original Message:

The North Carolina House Committee on State & Local Government is considering House Bill 808, which allows shelters to make more lifesaving choices for the cats in their care. The bill amends current state law to create additional disposition, or outcome, options for cats in shelters, including Trap-Neuter-Return(TNR).

Since community cats are not socialized to people and are unadoptable, they are almost always killed in shelters unless there are humane policies in place to protect them. Under HB 808, shelter staff could instead practice Return-To-Field (RTF), a shelter-involved version of TNR, for those cats. Through RTF, community cats are quickly moved out of the shelter to be spayed or neutered, vaccinated, eartipped, and returned to their original outdoor homes.

The bill also creates the option to transfer animals to another shelter. If one shelter doesn’t have the space and resources to house and care for an animal, the animal can be moved to a shelter that does.

Ask your Representative to pass HB 808 and protect cats and other animals in shelters.

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