Feral Information from Prince Edward Island

A letter from Dr. Alice Crook delegate - Atlantic Regional Summit

On PEI we have quite a successful feral cat TNR programme underway —the result of collaboration amongst a number of community constituencies (colony caregivers, vets, humane society). It began around the year 2000 with individuals who were caring for cat colonies getting together with a few interested vets and forming CAT (PEI Cat Action Team). (The very first was concerned citizens caring for cats on the North Rustico wharf). The programme is coordinated through CAT - ie they schedule the neutering of the cats and where it will be done, loan out the traps, provide advice on shelters for colonies, etc.

There is lots of practical information on their website http://www.cats-pei.ca/index.html including policies, the forms they use, etc. The Atlantic Vet College (AVC) does quite a bit of neutering, and several vet clinics on the Island are involved as well (which is good for regions that are too far from theAVC). The last total I have (as of Nov. 2008) is 4,471 cats neutered through this programme (with probably about 150 more since). The good thing about this collaboration is that it uses the various strengths of interested volunteers and avoids duplication of effort — eg. fund-raising, coordination of cat neutering, building of shelters, veterinary care. Speaking of fund-raising, we are fortunateto have some generous individual donors, besides the general fund-raising done by CAT.

I hope this information will be of help - it was good to meet you all!

Best regards,

Alice Crook, BSc, DVMCoordinator,
Sir James Dunn Animal Welfare Centre
Atlantic Veterinary College
Un. of Prince Edward Island
550 University Ave
Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, C1A 4P3

www.upei.ca/awc

(tel) 902-628-4360
(fax) 902-566-0823