There may not be an easy answer to the Baton Rouge area’s cat overpopulation crisis, but there is a simple solution: prevention (“Opinion: No easy answer on cat overpopulation,” 9/9).
Laws mandating spaying and neutering and requiring residents to keep cats indoors unless supervised prevent generations of cats from being born only to end up on the streets or in shelters. 
Re-abandoning homeless cats on the streets is no answer at all and sentences many cats to slow, painful deaths. PETA’s caseworkers routinely handle cases involving “outdoor cats” who have been poisoned, shot, mutilated, tortured, set afire, skinned alive, or killed in other cruel ways, often by people who didn’t want the cats on their property. Last July, a cat who was allowed to roam untended outdoors in Baton Rouge was found dismembered in a neighbor’s yard. 
As columnist Justin Stafford points out, cats allowed outdoors take a severe toll on vulnerable wildlife populations. They also pose a health risk to humans. A study published in Zoonoses and Public Health found that “free-roaming cats account for the most cases of human rabies exposure among domestic animals and account for approximately 1/3 of rabies postexposure prophylaxis treatments in humans in the United
States.”
Dumping cats back on the streets does nothing to reduce the homeless cat population and encourages citizens to abandon their cats on the streets instead of taking them to shelters. Phoenix College in Arizona recently ended its trap-neuter-reabandon program after eight years because “[i]nstead of stabilizing the population, it has doubled, creating an unhealthy situation for cats and the community.” 
The proposed program to re-abandon cats outdoors is also in direct conflict with Louisiana Criminal Law, R.S. Title 14, which forbids animal abandonment and requires the owners of cats and other animals to provide their animal companions with humane and adequate care.
The only humane way to end animal homelessness is by working to prevent the problem in the first place. Legalizing cat abandonment will only increase animal deaths and suffering. To learn more, visit www.PETA.org. 
Sincerely,
Teresa Chagrin
Animal Care & Control Specialist
People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA)