Update: The Holyoke city council Ordinance Committee is re- considering legislation that would affect free-roaming cats.
The committee is discussing changes to the proposed ordinance in light of public testimony provided at the meeting on Monday, 5/17.
Read articles about the meeting: 
Holyoke debates morality, quality life issues in dealing with feral cats
Speakers argue feral cat issue
Cat feeding ban gets panned in Holyoke
Background: On April 20th the Holyoke City Council considered a ban on all feeding and sheltering of feral or homeless cats, which had already received initial approval from the city's Ordinance sub-committee. Many individuals and organizations contacted city councilors and attended the hearing to urge the councilors to oppose this measure that would cause cats to suffer; the majority of councilors voted to send the legislation back to the ordinance committee for a public meeting on May 17th. An updated ordinance is currently in process; meanwhile, the original proposed ordinance can be found here.
The MSPCA has significant animal welfare concerns about the initially proposed ordinance, including:
- While ideally all cats would be kept indoors or supervised outdoors, promulgating this ban without grandfathering existing feral colonies will cause animals to suffer;
- A ban on feeding and sheltering cats will not reduce the number of outdoor cats or resolve conflicts with them - in fact, it could cause more problems; the cats will look for food elsewhere rather than staying in the colony, they will not simply leave the neighborhood just because they are no longer being fed;
- The most effective method of reducing the number of outdoor cats is to encourage cat owners to keep their cats indoors and to form managed feral cat colonies with scheduled feedings and Trap Neuter Return programs to stabilize and reduce the feral cat population. TNR works, and is a responsible, humane method of care for outdoor cats;
- “Catch and Kill’ programs don’t work and are expensive. When cats are removed from a location, survivors breed to capacity or new cats move in. This vacuum effect is well documented;
- Enforcement of the ban would be extremely difficult and time consuming - using tax payers dollars for a method that is not proven to have any impact on outdoor cat populations;
- The proposed ordinance and city’s other animal laws conflict; they both require “owners” to feed and at the same time prohibit it. Failing to provide food and shelter could be a violation of the state’s cruelty statute, given that the city deems animals as owned if they are fed for 48 hours;
- The definitions are troublesome. It is not clear that the ordinance refers to the outdoors; it bans feeding or sheltering any homeless cats on any private property. The definition of sheltering is broad and could be used to prevent people from having garages, etc., that cats could use to find shelter, but that were not intended for such purpose by property owners.
For all these reasons and more, this approach is being re-considered. Many feral and homeless cat groups are willing to help the city to resolve conflicts with free-roaming animals in a humane and effective manner.
