THE SUNNYSIDE SOUND PROJECT

LINDA BRYANT:
“When they are feral. They are too used to being outside.
They can be very vicious."

Linda Bryant is the president of Linda’s Feral Cat Assistance, an organization that traps and neuters stray cats in Queens and then returns them to their colonies in the wild. Linda, who is originally from England, founded her group ten years ago when she noticed that feral cat colonies were a significant problem in Sunnyside and Woodside. She was instrumental in establishing and spreading the word about TNR—short for Trap, Neuter and Return—in the New York area. TNR helps to control the feral cat population and has drastically reduced the euthanasia rates of city shelters.

Linda’s group traps between 300 and 500 feral cats in Queens a year. The ASPCA’s mobile clinic neuters and vaccinates the cats, and Linda’s Feral Cat Assistance holds them for a couple of days to recover from surgery. Volunteers then put them back out into the wild, providing food and shelter in a designated area. Only few of the cats are tame enough to be adopted. Most feral cats are too wild to live among humans, and TNR is the only alternative to euthanasia.

“When they are feral,” Linda says, “they are too used to being outside. They can be very vicious. They are completely reverted back to their natural stage.”

Linda’s Feral Cat Assistance has several volunteers in Queens who help trap and take care of the cats after surgery. But Linda explains there are several ways of contributing to the effort.

“We can always use cat food and gas money,” she says. Those who would like to get more involved can take a class to become TNR certified. She says the group’s biggest problem is finding garages and basements to hold the cats in the winter while they are recovering from surgery. In the podcast Linda talks about the TNR process, feral cat colonies in Sunnyside and the various ways of getting involved in the effort.