TNR program

The idea

Most TNR groups keep their colonies in a spreadsheet, their trappers in a phone and their clinic slots in an email thread. So a clinic day goes half empty or gets booked twice, a trap lent in spring is still missing in autumn, and the yearly count for funders takes a weekend and still counts some cats twice.

TNR itself is simple. Community cats, the unowned cats that live outdoors, are humanely trapped, spayed or neutered, vaccinated and eartipped: the tip of one ear is clipped flat, so anyone can see from afar that the cat is fixed. Then they go back to the place they live, where someone feeds them. No more kittens are born, and the colony settles and shrinks. Every place where cats live and are fed is a Colony. A colony gets its turn at a clinic as a Trapping, booked onto a Clinic day with a set number of surgery slots, and every cat a trapping brings in is a Cat that ends with an outcome. A few Coordinators plan and keep the records; the colony's Caretaker, the trappers and the clinic do the rest without opening the tool.

In any work tool, this becomes six kinds of linked records: colonies on a map; trappings booked onto clinic days; the cats each trapping brings in, whose workflow runs from Trapped to Returned; and the volunteers and numbered traps the group calls on and lends. Coordinators plan on a grid of the coming clinic days and their open slots, a button brings a trapping's cats back from the clinic, and a custom view on every colony draws each cat it's thought to have, eartipped or still to fix. It's the group's memory of every colony and every cat, not a medical record.

How it runs

Follow one colony, Laundromat lot, from a neighbor's report to the last eartip.

1. A neighbor reports cats. Anyone can fill the Colony report form: where the cats are, about how many, who's reporting and how to reach them. It arrives as a colony in Reported: about eight cats behind a laundromat, fed every evening by a neighbor.
2. A coordinator assesses it. A coordinator takes it on as its Coordinator, calls the reporter and visits at feeding time. They count the Estimated cats, eight, and the Eartipped at start, one cat fixed years ago. On the colony's page, the Colony portrait now draws eight cats, one with the clipped ear and seven grey: the picture every trapping fills in. They link the neighbor who feeds the cats as the colony's caretaker. Every helper the group works with is a Volunteer record, with a phone and Roles: Trapper, Caretaker or Driver; new helpers sign up through the Volunteer signup form. The coordinator notes the Feeding time, six in the evening, and moves the colony to Assessed. A report that isn't a colony, such as a lost pet or a single tame cat, is moved to Closed with a Closed reason, and so is a second report of a colony the group already knows.
3. A clinic offers a day. The coordinator who works with the clinics adds each clinic day in Planned as a partner clinic offers it: its Date, the Clinic, and its Slots, how many community cats the clinic will fix that day. The Elm Street clinic offers Tuesday the 21st with twelve slots. A clinic day the clinic calls off is moved to Cancelled; its trappings move to another day, or to Cancelled when they won't happen.
4. The coordinators plan. Every week they open Clinic days, the coming clinic days with each day's trappings beneath it, and Colony board, where the colonies waiting their turn show their cats Left to fix, the most first. Under the 21st, the coordinator adds a trapping for Laundromat lot, in Planned: the colony's turn at that clinic day, with its Planned cats, four of the seven left to fix, and the coordinator as its Coordinator. The day now has four more of its twelve slots Booked, and its Open slots drop to match. The coordinator adds two Trappers and the Trap night, Monday the 20th, and moves the colony to Being trapped. A day with more cats planned than slots turns red.
5. Traps go out. The group's traps are records too: every Trap is numbered, with the number painted on its side. The coordinator lends four of them, moving each to Lent with a trapper as its Holder. The Trap lent rule sets its Out since to today and its Due back to a week later.
6. The day before trap night, the Food reminder rule tells the trapping's coordinator to call the caretaker: no food from the next morning, water as usual, so the cats walk into the traps hungry.
7. Trap night. At feeding time the trappers catch five cats. The coordinator logs each one as a cat of the trapping, named by its coat ("orange tabby, white chest"), with its Age, Adult or Kitten, in Trapped. One of them wears an eartip already: the trappers release it on the spot, and the coordinator closes it as Already fixed, so it's never counted twice. The other four go to the clinic in their covered traps.
8. Clinic day. The clinic spays or neuters, vaccinates and eartips each cat. When the trappers collect them, the coordinator copies each cat's Sex from the clinic's sheet and presses Back from clinic on the trapping. Its trapped cats move to Recovering with Fixed on set to today, and the trapping moves to Done. A kitten young enough to be tamed goes to a partner rescue as To rescue, and a cat the vet found too sick to save ends as Died. The coordinator sets outcomes like these before pressing the button, so it leaves them alone. At the end of the day the coordinator moves the clinic day to Done.
9. Recovery and return. The cats rest in their covered traps somewhere quiet and warm. Each one shows its Return on, the day it can go home; a common choice is the day after surgery for males and two days after for females. On that day a trapper releases the cat where it was caught, at feeding time, and the coordinator moves it to Returned. The traps come back too: the coordinator moves each to Available, and the Trap back rule clears its holder and dates. A trap past its due date shows red as Overdue; one that never comes back is Lost, and one too damaged to use is Retired.
10. The colony settles. Laundromat lot now has four Cats fixed, and its Fixed share, the share of its cats that wear an eartip, is 63 out of 100: on its portrait, five of the eight cats wear the clipped ear and three are still grey. A second trapping two weeks later brings in the last three. With every cat eartipped, the coordinator moves the colony to Managed. The caretaker keeps feeding. When a newcomer turns up, reported on the form or by phone, the coordinator presses + on the portrait, which adds one to the Estimated cats, and moves the colony back to Being trapped. When the cats are gone or the caretaker moves away, the coordinator moves the colony to Closed.

What people look at

• Every morning in trapping weeks — In care: every cat trapped or recovering, with its trapping and the day it goes home, red once that day has passed. Who is in the holding space, and who goes back today.
• Every week — Clinic days: the coming clinic days, each with its open slots and its trappings beneath it, red when a day is overbooked. Colony board: every colony in its state, the most cats left to fix first, with new reports to assess in Reported.
• At a colony visit — the Colony portrait, a custom view on every colony's page: one cat for each it's thought to have, eartipped or still grey, and its trappings below. If your tool can't draw it, Colony board's Fixed share and Left to fix do the job.
• Any time — Colonies, a map of every colony colored by state, with its fixed share; Traps for who holds which trap and which are overdue; Volunteers for finding a trapper or calling a caretaker; the Colony report and Volunteer signup forms for the public and for new helpers; and the Fixed by month report, females and males, the number funders ask for.
• How to run the TNR program — this process on one screen, kept where the group works.

The rules

These are all the automations; everything else in the story is done by people.

• Back from clinic (a button on a trapping): moves the trapping to Done, and every cat of it that is Trapped to Recovering, with its Fixed on set to today. It checks nothing: a cat that went to a rescue or died is set by hand first, so the button leaves it alone.
• Trap lent: when a trap moves to Lent, its Out since is set to today and its Due back to seven days from today.
• Trap back: when a trap moves to Available, its holder is unlinked and its Out since and Due back are cleared.
• Food reminder: every day at 09:00, for every trapping that is Planned with a trap night tomorrow, its Coordinator is notified to call the colony's caretaker about holding back food.

No automations in your tool? Then a person does each of these at the same moment, and the promises they keep below become practices.

What must stay true

Whatever anyone edits, adapts or corrects, these hold; each says what keeps it so.

• ★ Every cat goes home to the colony it came from. A cat belongs to one trapping and a trapping to one colony, so where to release it is never a guess. Kept by the Trapping relation on Cat and the Colony relation on Trapping; releasing it at that spot, at feeding time, is a practice.
• ★ Every cat is counted once. A cat trapped with an eartip is closed as Already fixed, and only cats Recovering or Returned count as fixed. Kept by the Cats fixed formulas.
• ★ Every cat ends with an outcome: Returned, To rescue, Died or Already fixed. Shown on In care, which lists every cat without one and turns red once a cat's Return on has passed; a cat still Trapped after its clinic day stays on In care until a coordinator gives it its outcome.
• ★ No cat is trapped for a clinic day that's full: a day's trappings plan no more cats than it has slots, because a trapped cat with nowhere to go suffers for it. Shown on Clinic days, where Open slots below 0 is red; moving a trapping to another day is the coordinators' call.
• Food is held back before every trap night. A practice; the Food reminder asks the trapping's coordinator the day before, and nothing enforces it.
• Every lent trap has a holder and a day it's due back. Kept by Trap lent and Trap back; shown on Traps, where an overdue trap is red.
• A colony's numbers follow its cats: Cats fixed adds up its trappings' fixed cats, and Fixed share adds those eartipped at the start, against the latest Estimated cats. Kept by the Cats fixed and Fixed share formulas; correcting the estimate when cats arrive, leave or die is the coordinator's practice, one press of + or − on the Colony portrait.

Making it yours

Decide these before you set it up; each has a default if you shrug.

• One coordinator: drop both Coordinator fields; the Food reminder comes to you.
• Other words: "ferals" for community cats, "feeder" for caretaker, "job" for trapping, "spay day" for clinic day: rename freely.
• Vouchers instead of clinic days: treat each batch of vouchers from a clinic as a clinic day whose Slots is how many vouchers it holds and whose Date is when they expire. Clinic days then counts vouchers instead of surgery slots.
• Microchips and tests: a Microchip field on Cat when the clinic chips cats; vaccines and test results stay in the clinic's records.
• Where colonies are: where a colony's address could bring it harm, keep Colony and Volunteer for the coordinators only, apart from anyone else who opens the setup.
• Finish one colony before the next: four cats from each of ten colonies leaves every colony breeding. Booking a colony's whole count over the next clinic days is a common choice, and Colony board shows what each colony has left.
• What teams add once it runs: a check on managed colonies every three months, a waiting list for traps, a report of outcomes by month, and a kitten count by colony in spring. Each is small, and left out so the first season stays simple.

Sources

• Guide to Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) and Colony Care, Alley Cat Allies, ASPCA and the Mayor's Alliance for NYC's Animals, 2016: the whole practice, from holding back food to the clinic's daily limit, recovery times and release where each cat was trapped.
• How You Can Help Community Cats: A Step-by-Step Guide to Trap-Neuter Return, Alley Cat Allies: trapping step by step, the eartip and keeping track of a colony.
• Trap, Neuter, Return (TNR) Program for Feral Cats, City of Toronto, 2026: clinic appointments booked before trapping, and the minimum recovery before release.