No more dumping kittens or cats with clear signs of ownership, orders judge
SAN DIEGO, California––San Diego Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal on June 9, 2025 ended the long-running “cat control trial of the century” with a final ruling that the San Diego Humane Society has sufficiently amended how it handles cats found at large to comply with California state law.
Judge Bacal issued a preliminary ruling against how the San Diego Humane Society practiced “return to field” cat population management in December 2024.
When the San Diego Humane Society continued to practice “return-to-field” without amendment, Judge Bacal reinforced her previous ruling with a preliminary injunction in February 2025.
Return-to-field vs. TNR
Judge Bacal’s final verdict concludes a case brought against the San Diego Humane Society in May 2021 by the Southern California animal rescue charities Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors.
The case from the beginning focused on defining the difference between “return-to-field” and TNR, two superficially similar animal control techniques.
TNR, short for trap-neuter-return, is also sometimes called TNVR, to emphasize that vaccination is an essential part of it.
ABC: TNR for street dogs
TNR, introduced by Walt Disney Inc. in 1955 to manage feral cats at Disneyland, has become popularized as a feral cat control method since circa 1990.
The same basic idea, as a method of managing street dog populations, was separately introduced by the Blue Cross of India in 1966 under the name ABC, for Animal Birth Control.
Whether called TNR, TNVR, or ABC, the technique is now legally mandated in India and several other nations, and is commonly practiced worldwide.
“Return-to-field”
“Return-to-field,” by contract, is the practice of releasing tame, friendly cats and kittens, with clear indications of having been pets, back where they were found, on the theory that they will find their own way home.
“Return-to-field,” promoted by the no-kill foundation Maddie’s Fund and the Best Friends Animal Society, was introduced less than a dozen years ago by Kate Hurley of the Koret Shelter Medicine program at the University of California, Davis campus.
Hurley testified at trial for the San Diego Humane Society.
Spin-doctoring
Though Judge Bacal’s preliminary verdict compelled the San Diego Humane Society to substantially amend its “return-to-field” procedures, San Diego Humane Society media contact Nina Thompson on June 10, 2025 issued a statement proclaiming the society “delighted with” Bacal’s final decision.
“In her ruling,” Thompson said, “Bacal explicitly affirmed the legality of the organization’s lifesaving Community Cat Program.”
Thompson did not mention, however, that the San Diego Humane Society Community Cat Program as result of the lawsuit is now not the same program that it was when Bacal ruled in December 2024 that it violated California Penal Code section § 597s.
That section of the California Penal Code states simply that, “Every person who willfully abandons any animal is guilty of a misdemeanor.”
San Diego Humane Society statement ignores court-mandated policy changes
“The San Diego Humane Society will continue operating its program exactly as they have been since February 2025,” Thompson crowed.
“The ruling outright rejects,” Thompson said, “plaintiff’s request that a cat’s socialization status be considered when determining a cat’s eligibility for the program – the issue at the heart of the case all along.”
Actually, pointed out both City News Service and the Times of San Diego, “Bacal wrote that the humane society has since revised its Community Cat Program policies in a way that now complies with state law.
“Those revisions include new considerations that San Diego Humane Society officials should take into account when considering whether a cat has an owner, including if the cat has indentations around his or her neck to indicate the recent presence of a collar or signs that the feline has received recent veterinary or medical treatment. If sufficient signs of ownership are found, the cat should be admitted into a shelter, the ruling states.”
“Claiming to have ‘won’ case they just lost”
Said San Diego Humane Society president Gary Weitzman, via Thompson, “This ruling is a resounding endorsement of our evidence-based, expert-endorsed, lifesaving approach to community cats. It allows us to continue providing critical medical care, spay/neuter, and safe return for unowned cats while reserving shelter space for animals who truly need it.”
Responded plaintiffs’ attorney Bryan Pease, “True to form, the San Diego Humane Society is now claiming to have ‘won’ the case they just lost, in which the court put them under a permanent injunction to stop their unlawful business practices of dumping cats on the streets without food, water, or monitoring unless there was ‘verifiable proof’ of prior ownership.
“The only reason the court found their current practices to be lawful ,” Pease pointed out, “is that we have had them under a preliminary injunction,” now made permanent, “since February.
San Diego Humane Society enjoined from reverting
“For nearly five years,” Pease continued, “the San Diego Humane Society had been releasing virtually all cats brought in outdoors with no monitoring or caretakers, to be eaten by coyotes, killed by cars, or to starve and dehydrate to death.
“This week’s ruling makes the injunction permanent, prohibiting the San Diego Humane Society from going back to its old policy,” Pease emphasized.
“This is a major victory for the plaintiffs and the public,” Pease assessed, “including the many witnesses who testified at trial, in holding San Diego Humane Society accountable for its illegal actions in abandoning cats outdoors.
“The court found that the San Diego Humane Society’s actions were illegal and issued a permanent injunction requiring them to admit stray and abandoned cats into the shelter for care and adoption services,” Pease repeated, “whom the San Diego Humane Society previously would have dumped out on the street like garbage.”
(See San Diego cat control trial verdict & L.A. shelter fine expose “no kill” failures.)
“Not a vindication,” agrees Ed Boks
Agreed Animal Politics blogger Ed Boks in a June 12, 2025 installment entitled Legal Defeat, PR Victory: How the San Diego Humane Society Spun a Court Rebuke Into a Win, “Far from affirming SDHS’ past practices, Judge Katherine Bacal found that the organization’s former intake protocols were unlawfully narrow, resulting in the release of cats with clear signs of ownership. It was only after SDHS revised those protocols—under legal pressure and in the midst of litigation—that the court deemed the program compliant with state law. This was not a vindication. It was a judicial intervention that compelled reform.
“The court declined to require the San Diego Humane Society to admit all “friendly” cats or restrict releases to registered caretakers,” Boks conceded, “ruling that sociability is not a legally relevant factor in determining abandonment under California law.”
“Prior requirement was unlawfully restrictive”
However, Boks continued, “The court held that the San Diego Humane Society’s prior requirement for ‘verifiable proof of ownership’ was unlawfully restrictive. By demanding hard evidence—like registered microchips or documented owners—the San Diego Humane Society excluded cats who showed clear signs of prior ownership, such as being sterilized without an ear-tip or having an unregistered chip.
“The implication is significant: shelters cannot use rigid intake policies to turn away animals who by law must be sheltered. The ruling clarifies that objective signs of ownership—however incomplete—must now trigger a legal duty to admit the animal,” instead of placing the animal in a neuter/return program, which by definition is meant to accommodate self-sufficient feral animals.
Now required to admit kittens
“The revised protocol now requires the admission of all kittens under 12 weeks of age,” Boks noted, “and mandates staff err on the side of sheltering kittens up to six months old unless they are clearly able to survive on their own.
“Importantly,” Boks wrote, “ the court did not reject TNR programs outright. Instead, it drew a necessary legal line—upholding the release of truly unowned, free-roaming, feral cats while prohibiting shelters from using TNR as a loophole to abandon socialized or formerly owned animals.
“This distinction is critical: the ruling helps preserve TNR’s original purpose—reducing feral cat populations humanely—without allowing shelters to offload their legal and moral responsibilities by co-opting this important program.”
“Institutional denial & defection of responsibility”
Concluded Boks, who for more than 30 years headed the animal care and control agencies serving Maricopa and Yavapai counties in Arizona, New York City, and Los Angeles, “What stands out most in the aftermath, however, is the San Diego Humane Society’s response.
“Rather than acknowledge the court’s intervention and the reforms it compelled, the organization doubled down on its public relations narrative, seeking to transform a legal correction into a public relations victory.
“The attempt to rebrand a legal rebuke as validation mirrors a growing trend in the animal welfare world,” Boks lamented, combining “institutional denial and deflection of responsibility.
(See Cold, hard evidence re small mammals missing from humane societies.)
“Like the Best Friends Animal Society,” Boks charged, the San Diego Humane Society “has weaponized marketing and messaging—framing any challenge as an attack on “lifesaving,” and repackaging court-mandated reforms as if they were visionary achievements.”
(See Best Friends’ no-kill initiative power play, by Ed Boks.)
Please donate to support our work:
www.animals24-7.org/donate/
Discover more from Animals 24-7
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
It has a sobering effect to realize that a charity that presents itself as protecting animals would instead choose to abandon some of them to the streets. The lack of empathy, inability to imagine and feel what these animals will experience and feel, and zero awareness of the animals’ desire to relate to people raises the question of why these individuals are working at a humane society. What attracted them to this kind of work? How do they see animals? What motivates their policy decisions?
This is a reminder of how important it is for donors to research the animal charities they wish to support.
LETTERS OF CONCERN:
Gary Weitzman, DVM & CEO, San Diego Humane Society
EMAIL – gweitzman@sdhumane.org
Letters email, San Diego Union Tribune – letters@sduniontribune.com
The real atrocity is not requiring cats to be contained, by owners or by feral cat removers. Honest cat lovers provide by indoor/outdoor containment facilities for feral cats, thus protecting them from death by auto or by coyote or starvation. As a cat lover I visited such a facility in N Calif which was built by a private person to protect feral cats. Considering that cats are an invasive species which kill native species, from baby rabbits to billions of wild birds, there is NO ethical or moral reason for TNR or any return of feral cats to the wild. In 1980s on a trip to Hawaii, hiking way out into the wilds along the shore in Hawaii, we stopped for lunch and as we ate lunch, out of the forest came cats! I stopped counting at a hundred!!! Those feral cats have already caused extinctions in many locations around the world and any caring thinking person realizes these cats should be contained, not roaming around killing native wildlife AND spreading dangerous diseases as they have to the Florida panthers! Why isn’t this problem being addressed???
The above comment contains a considerable amount of misinformation, beginning with Laurella Desborough’s description of Cat House on the Kings, which she has often mentioned in comments before. Founded by Lynea Lattanzio in 1981, Cat House on the Kings is in fact the biggest spay/neuter provider to TNR practitioners in north-central California.
The allegation that cats kill “billions of wild birds” is demonstrably false. This claim, repeatedly amplified by the American Bird Conservancy, traces back to a 1927 estimate that feral cats were half the U.S. bird population, projected forward and multiplied by an exaggerated estimate of how many birds cats kill, relative to rodents.
The most recent and most comprehensive estimates of the U.S. feral cat population are derived from the D.C. Cat Count, conducted in 2020-2021 by University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science population ecologist Tyler Flockhart.
This was by far the largest such study based on actual cat-counting data, not mathematical models based on decades of compounded guesstimates.
Funding the D.C. Cat Count were the Humane Society of the U.S., PetSmart Charities, Maddie’s Fund, the Winn Feline Foundation, and the Humane Rescue Alliance, which holds the Washington D.C. animal control contract.
Input also came from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, which had previously amplified some of the grossly exaggerated numbers.
(See D.C. Cat Count confirms low feral cat population, lots of free-roaming pets.)
The D.C. Cat Count put the total Washington D.C. cat population at about 200,000.
Of those cats, about 100,000 live indoors only. About 100,000 more cats are owned pets, with some outdoor access.
Just 3,000 cats, 1.5% of the total, 3% of the cats outdoors, are feral, living without humans providing them with regular meals and shelter.
The D.C. Cat Count finding of 3,000 bona fide feral cats in Washington D.C. projects to 1.4 million feral cats nationally, whose cumulative toll on birds would be significantly less than that of window glass, cars, farm pesticides, and weather.
(See Who killed 2.9 billion birds since 1970? Not cats, says a look through the glass!)
The anecdote Laurella Desborough relates about counting cats in the “1980s on a trip to Hawaii” describes not feral cats, but rather fed cats, who converged on her lunch instead of running away precisely because they were not feral cats.
Such relatively tame “outdoor pets” are exactly the population that the Southern California animal rescue charities Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors sued the San Diego Humane Society to keep from being released.
Incidentally, concerning disease, a systematic effort was made in the Middle Ages to purge Europe of cats, who in those days were all outdoor cats. The outcome was the rat-borne Black Death.
A few centuries later the same experiment was tried in London, England. The result was the rat-borne 1665 Great Plague of London.
In 1994 the city of Surat, India, made a determined effort to poison both street dogs and feral cats. Again the result was an outbreak of rat-borne bubonic plague.
Technically, of course, bubonic plague is spread by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which infects the fleas who infest rats when rat populations grow unchecked. Cats, however, remain the most effective method of interupting the rat-borne disease vector.
Cats and Wildlife. Download – Issues to Consider About Cats and Urban Wildlife https://petwelfare.org.au/position-statements/domestic-cats
Domestic urban cats are not ‘feral’: https://petwelfare.org.au/position-statements/cat-definitions No ‘feral’ cats enter Australian Council pounds. Calling a ‘pest’ prevents being seen as a potential ‘pet’, and outlaws care.
Community Cat Programs are effective cat management. Emeritus Professor Jacquie Rand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbK3R36Xjg https://petwelfare.org.au/community-cat-programs This ‘One Welfare’ approach optimises the well-being of people, animals and their environment. Community Cat Programs reduce the number of stray cats in pounds and shelters, and free up more resources to care for and re-home dogs. More info, or if you want to help: https://petwelfare.org.au/ https://www.facebook.com/PetWelfareFoundation/
Community Cat Programs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQbK3R36Xjg https://petwelfare.org.au/community-cat-programs
Urban Cat Management in Australia – Evidence-based Strategies for Success: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/8/1083 Community Cat Program saved Banyule $1million over eight years.
Rethinking Urban Cat Management—Limitations and Unintended Consequences of Traditional Cat Management: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/7/1005
Laurella Desborough, I agree with you totally. TNR ot whatever else they want to call it is abandonment. Cats should be treated the same way that we treat dogs. Sometimes humane euthanasia is required I realize that euthanasia is very sad but it isn’t cruelty?Dumping cats out into the streets leaves them to be shot, poisoned, hit by cars, tortured… I’ve seen all of these things.
As a wildlife rehabber for 15 years, I took in countless numbers of baby wild animals that had puncture wounds from cats and most these poor creatures could not be saved.
Sharing with gratitude. Shelters, ACCs, rescues and sanctuaries are overwhelmed with “kitten season,” abandonments and betrayals, the dire financial situation too many find themselves in with the result that they feel unable to support their companion animal family members, and post-COVID “surrenders.”
These entities are not and should not be life care for companion animals, but temporary refuges on the way to the loving permanent homes every one deserves. They give exponentially more in terms of unconditional loyalty, love, companionship, empathy, and more. It’s high time everyone who feels so inclined and can, steps up and adopts. You’ll get far more than you could ever imagine.
The issue of releasing cats back into neighborhoods, owned or not, does nothing to address the issue of the slaughter of 2.5 BILLION cats per year by cats. We need laws against letting cats run wild, period. All cats deserve homes: what they don’t deserve is our song bird population as snacks.
“The slaughter of 2.5 BILLION cats per year by cats” is both an obvious typographical error and indicative of the low quality of intellectual input in the comment. The allegation that cats kill “billions of wild birds” is demonstrably false.
This claim, repeatedly amplified by the American Bird Conservancy, traces back to a 1927 estimate that feral cats were half the U.S. cat population, projected forward and multiplied by an exaggerated estimate of how many birds cats kill, relative to rodents.
Specifically, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute ornithologists Scott Loss and Peter Marra and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Tom Will alleged on January 29, 2013 in the journal Nature Communications that domestic cats in the U.S. kill up to 3.7 billion birds per year and as many as 20.7 billion mice, voles, and other small mammals.
However, Loss, Marra, and Will derived these projections by overstating the AVMA and Pet Product Manufacturers Association estimates of the U.S. pet cat population by ten million, the outdoor pet cat population as indicated by those and a variety of other surveys by closer to 50 million, and the best documented estimates of the feral cat population available at that time by up to 64 million.
Thus Loss, Marra, and Will argued that cat predation on birds is magnitudes of order higher than the estimate of 100 to 125 million birds killed by cats per year issued by Albert Manville of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in 2002, previously considered the most credible.
And no one has come close to replicating the Loss, Marra, & Will numbers from credible input data in the dozen years since. Several other studies, however, have found that the Loss, Marra, and Will input data and assumptions about cat predation were very far from reality.
(See D.C. Cat Count confirms low feral cat population, lots of free-roaming pets and Who killed 2.9 billion birds since 1970? Not cats, says a look through the glass!)
Cats and Wildlife. Download – Issues to Consider About Cats and Urban Wildlife https://petwelfare.org.au/position-statements/domestic-cats
Rethinking Urban Cat Management—Limitations and Unintended Consequences of Traditional Cat Management: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15/7/1005
Thank you Merritt and Beth, Australia is so far behind USA in cat management. Aus Local Councils keep making cat curfews which kill more cats. Local Council surveys are usually open worldwide. Please take a moment to fill in a survey to ask for a community Cat Program, instead of expensive, lethal cat curfews. Glen Eira Cat Curfew survey is open until 29th of June. Glen Eira states it is ‘Following the lead from other councils’, and claiming ‘safe’ and ‘liveable,’ to lock-in felines permanently. Online: https://www.haveyoursaygleneira.com.au/cat-curfew Email: engagement@gleneira.vic.gov.au Petitions are useless. Responses to government consultations help. more info here: https://www.change.org/p/knox-advocats/u/33586385. https://www.change.org/p/knox-advocats
Thank you Merritt and Beth, Australia is so far behind USA in cat management. Aus Local Councils keep making cat curfews which kill more cats. Local Council surveys are usually open worldwide. Please take a moment to fill in a survey to ask for a Community Cat Program, instead of expensive, lethal cat curfews. Glen Eira Cat Curfew survey is open until 29th of June. Glen Eira states it is ‘Following the lead from other councils’, and claiming ‘safe’ and ‘liveable,’ to lock-in felines permanently. Online: https://www.haveyoursaygleneira.com.au/cat-curfew Email: engagement@gleneira.vic.gov.au Petitions are useless. Responses to government consultations help. More info here: https://www.change.org/p/knox-advocats/u/33586385. https://www.change.org/p/knox-advocats. Why make a cat curfew which raises the cost-of-living for all residents? Curfews make more homeless, stray cats, raise expensive euthanasia, overload shelters, and place rescuers at suicide-risk higher than Australian police and firefighters endure.