Abstract
The community cats program was referred to manage free-roaming cats on the university campus. To consider the factors that reduced the number of free-roaming cats and continued the program’s long- term activities, the numbers of identified, neutered, abandoned, immigrated, rehomed, disappeared, and dead cats, the number of treatment requests to the veterinary hospital on campus, the number of participants in the project group, and the cost of the activity were calculated and analyzed. The decreases in numbers due to rehoming, disappearance, and death outweighed the increases due to breeding, immigration, and abandonment, and the number of free-roaming cats on the university campus decreased to zero. Although about half of the cats disappeared or died, about half were transferred to new owners, and we were able to achieve reductions in the number of free-roaming cats on the campus. During six years of activity, we able to stably secure a number of participants in the project group and activity funds. Efforts combining a TNR (trap-neuter-return) program and rehoming, and the creation of a project group to demonstrate the effects of these activities are suggested as factors in reducing the number of free-roaming cats and in
continuing the long-term activities.
