The Callosa de Segura City Council promised in 2024 to do everything they could to safeguard and care for animals in the best way possible. They also promised to raise awareness and encourage people to take responsibility for protecting and preserving feline colonies. The whole council’s acceptance of a Municipal Plan for the Management of Urban Feline Colonies showed that they were serious about this promise. The plan’s goal was to improve its policy of respecting and protecting animal life by making sure that these animals were healthy in the city, making it easier for them to live with people, and stopping public health concerns. Controlling the number of cats, where they eat, and their hygienic conditions, as well as getting responsible volunteers to help out in these colonies, made this possible. Feral cats are creatures that are quite good at living in metropolitan environments where they have their own space. They build tiny colonies in which several females breed and a few males breed. They set up shop in areas where they can find food, refuge from bad weather, and protection from outside threats. The feral cat is not a stray; it lives in that area. These colonies can grow very quickly, so they need to be watched and controlled. This is a double problem because it means making sure that animals are safe and happy, as well as protecting public health and community peace.
To manage feral cat colonies, people catch and watch feral cats for health reasons, sterilise them, label them, and then return them to their original colony. The World Health Organisation recommends Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programmes as the best way to limit the number of urban cat colonies and keep them healthy. The Trap-Neuter-Return procedure stops female cats from making the sounds they make when they are in heat, calms down male cats, and as a result, stops cats from being aggressive and marking their territory with urine. This is good for the cats since it lowers stress in the group, keeps the neighbours from being disturbed, and stops overpopulation. For a colony to grow successfully, there must be one or more people in charge, all of the cats in the colony must be sterilised (research shows that at least 75% of the population must be sterilised to keep the population under control), the group must be closely watched to see if new cats arrive (lost, abandoned, etc.), and cats that are friendly with people must be adopted or fostered. Cats that don’t like people should stay in the colony and not be brought to a shelter. When they get back to their home, the people who feed them provide them food, care for them for the rest of their lives, give them water and good food, and take them to the vet when they need it.
The method also encourages animal welfare groups and carers to work together, makes the relationship between these groups and the local government more normal, encourages coordination and shared goals, requires volunteer work, encourages citizens to get involved in city affairs, and encourages public administration and private entities to work together. It cuts down on the number of animals that need to go to shelters and rescue centres, which lowers their costs and makes them less crowded. As the problems that happen during mating season go away, complaints also go down. The TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) approach involves trapping the animals, taking them to the vet for an assessment, and giving them the right medicines to lower the risk of diseases that cats and other animals can spread. Controlled colonies make sure that both people and pets stay healthy.
The goal of the Municipal Plan for the Comprehensive Management of Urban Feline Colonies has been to control the city’s cats in terms of their health and numbers. This has been done by managing existing colonies, creating new ones, regulating feeding, and managing volunteer work. The Collaboration Agreement between the Callosa de Segura City Council and the non-profit group “Felins Alegres” (Happy Cats) is meant to set rules for the volunteer work done by the Felinos Alegres Association. This is to make the TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) project a way to control and protect the cat population. The Felinos Alegres Association’s volunteer programme supervised the feline colony park under an agreement with the Callosa de Segura City Council. As of January 2025, there were 33 recognised feline colonies and a census of 537 cats, 223 of which had previously been moved. The city council and CER are working together on a sterilisation programme to fully manage them.
In this regard, a training course was given on October 29th for volunteers, attended by 40 persons, to qualify them as hill feeders. You won’t be able to be a volunteer, supervisor, or coordinator in the programme if you don’t get this training. Everyone who passes the course will get a personalised feeder card that lets them feed cats in the authorised and regulated hills in their designated areas. The TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) programme equipment has also been updated to make the plan work better. This is in addition to the help that the Department of Animal Welfare gives to volunteers. This included getting better capture gear and more cages so that the first phase of cat capture could happen in the best possible conditions for the animals. It also included signs to help identify the colonies. Another important goal for 2026 is to find all the cat colonies.
Juan de Dios Navarro, the Animal Welfare Councillor, thinks that these steps will lead to a big improvement in the programme’s execution in 2026.
Author: Derek Appleton
Other Articles
Alicante arrest leads to a child pornography producer in Argentina
67-year-old man dies inside the Haiti mine in Cartagena
No Comment! Be the first one.