Hero for Community Cats
Eliana is a hero for community cats! This dedicated young woman has inspired a whole community of TNR volunteers with her efforts to help cats and kittens in DeKalb County.
All LifeLine shelters will be closing earlier on Thursday, 9/26, at 4pm. The LifeLine Community Animal Center will reopen at 11am and our Fulton County and DeKalb County shelters will reopen at 1pm on Friday, 9/27. All shelters will resume normal hours on Saturday, 9/28, barring any complications from the storm.
The LifeLine 2025 Calendar, “A Vibrant Atlanta”, is ON SALE NOW!
LifeLine’s Community Cat Program is metro Atlanta’s first and largest Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) assistance program. And, it is dedicated to humanely managing community cat colonies using TNR.
Community cats are free-roaming cats who can be feral from lack of human interaction. Before LifeLine brought TNR to Atlanta, community cats were routinely picked up, taken to county shelters and euthanized. Now, thanks to TNR, cats are trapped, neutered, vaccinated, ear-tipped (to identify them as neutered) and returned back to their neighborhoods.
TNR is the only effective method to humanely and dramatically decrease the number of cats. Trapping and removing the cats doesn’t work because new cats will move into the area and breed up to capacity. This is well-documented and called the “vacuum effect.”
Additionally, relocating cats to a different area is animal abandonment, which falls under animal cruelty crimes in the state of Georgia. Less than 50% of relocated cats survive because they don’t know the dangers in the area and succumb to predators, car tires, starvation, etc.
Community cats help control the rat and snake population
Because cats are spayed or neutered and vaccinated, there is less fighting over mates, howling, marking and disease spread
TNR saves taxpayers over $3.5 million by keeping cats out of greater Atlanta shelters
Shelter-Neuter-Return (SNR) is a protocol based on shelter practices and proven research. When healthy, friendly or feral outdoor adult cats are brought into LifeLine’s county shelters, either by residents or by Animal Enforcement, the cats are vaccinated, spayed or neutered and ear-tipped. After recovering from surgery, the cats are returned to the location where they were originally found.
Returning healthy free-roaming cats to the areas they were found increases their chances of finding their families. This gives them a 10-50 times greater success rate of returning home than cats at the shelter.
Read more about our SNR policies, procedures and exceptions.
Eliana is a hero for community cats! This dedicated young woman has inspired a whole community of TNR volunteers with her efforts to help cats and kittens in DeKalb County.
With colder temperatures settling in, community cats are looking for places to keep warm. Thankfully, you can help by building community cat houses!
To save the lives of outdoor cats, LifeLine follows a shelter-neuter-return (SNR) protocol based on best shelter practices and proven research.
The Community Cat Program assists neighborhoods by:
Our Community Cat Program is a resource, not a rescue. We will not remove cats from your property, but we provide the tools to help you humanely manage the cats. For more information on pricing and policy, please refer to our pet care page.
To perform such a large volume of spay/neuter surgeries and provide community cats with the medical care they need, we rely on generous donations from our community.
Please consider making a donation today!