Coastal Cats TNVR in Taylor and Levy County, Florida
May 7th, 2025
By Beth Gammie, Director of Field Services –
The RedRover Responders team just concluded another successful Coastal Cats TNVR (Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Return) deployment in Taylor and Levy counties in the Gulf Coast of Florida. Alongside Operation Catnip, 9 volunteers traveled to Gainesville, Florida, to help trap, shelter, and treat 100 community cats living in these counties – living in areas where they are at risk from impact during hurricanes and storm surge.
This operation, with generous funding by the BISSELL Pet Foundation, aims to humanely ease cat overpopulation in these vulnerable areas. As always in these operations, we partnered with Operation Catnip, which provided staff for trapping, and veterinarians and techs for the surgeries and treatment.
Our volunteers and Operation Catnip staff worked a long four days: two days of trapping, then two days of return to field), sheltering the cats in the traps, and cleaning and disinfecting the traps at the end.
We trapped in areas in Taylor and Levy counties, working with our partners A Hound to Hold and also the Town of Inglis in a “mop up” operation for some areas where we had trapped before.
Caregivers we interacted with were extremely grateful for the free veterinary services for their beloved cats, including spay/neuter, vaccinations, deworming, flea preventative, and ear-tipping to indicate they have been spayed/neutered. Operation Catnip had received a large donation of cat food, and our teams distributed generous supplies of this food to caregivers when we returned the cats to the sites where they had been humanely trapped.
At several sites, we were able to get the very last of the cats trapped and spayed/neutered. This makes a huge difference to their caregivers – working to break the cycle of seeing their community cats get pregnant and have accidental litters.
Feeling fulfilled and seeing the impact we made together, our team went back home delighted knowing that the cats and their caregivers are now happier and healthier.
