ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Fed up with feral cats, one Albuquerque woman says despite what the city says, their trap, neuter, release program is not working and now she’s taking them to federal court.
She’s been fighting against this program for years because it turned her property into a feral cat colony. “It’s a gruesome, inhumane, illegal thing to do to any animal,” says Marcy Britton.
The City of Albuquerque has been trapping feral cats for the last seven years. They fix them so they don’t breed and then release them back into neighborhoods where they were trapped. “Cats are not wildlife, our city is not a cat sanctuary,” Britton says.
This week, Marcy Britton filed a property rights lawsuit in federal court calling out the city and Mayor Tim Keller. She claims the TNR program is the reason there is a colony of cats in her neighborhood, near Pennsylvania and Indian School. She believes it poses health and safety risks. “It’s disgusting. I mean you come home from work and there are cats on your porch. They get hit by cars, they get poisoned, this is where I live. My property value has been reduced,” Britton says.
However back in September, Animal Welfare told News 13 that the program is working and that they are slowly cutting down the number of stray cats. “We’re no longer going and picking up 30-40 from one area, we’re going around and getting 4, 5, 10, much smaller numbers,” says Albuquerque Animal Welfare’s Adam Ricci.
Britton doesn’t buy that and believes a better solution would be to hold the cats at the shelter for as long as possible. “For as long as they can. If there is no adopter or no owner, then they should be humanely euthanized,” Britton says.
As of September, Animal Welfare picked up 2,100 cats, 1,700 of them were re-released. We reached out to Animal Welfare and the mayor’s office for a response but did not hear back.
(Information from KRQE.com)