"When we look at things on a neighborhood level and we're noticing patterns, noticing new colonies — when something's predictable, it's preventable."
This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund, OcuTrap, and The Kitten Conference.
What does it look like to build a community cat program from scratch — not just logistically, but with real intention about how change happens in a neighborhood? In this episode, Stacy LeBaron speaks with Tonya Cook, Community Cat Program Manager at Ohio Alleycat Resource (OAR) in Cincinnati, about her remarkable journey from neonatal kitten foster to full-time community cat advocate, and what she's learned about scaling impact when you're a team of one.
Tonya's path into animal welfare began in 2020 when she started fostering neonatal kittens with Cincinnati Animal CARE. Night feedings and fragile lives gave her a front-row seat to how many kittens were being born outside — and how few resources existed to stop the cycle at the source. That question drove her toward TNR and, ultimately, toward a complete career change. In 2022, she left behind 15 years as a professional photographer to pursue animal welfare full-time, gaining hands-on experience at UCAN and Cincinnati Animal CARE before joining OAR in 2025 to build its community cat program from the ground up.
In its pilot year, that program has facilitated the TNR of over 400 cats — most of them trapped by Tonya herself, two days a week, before she recognized the limits of that approach. When burnout began to set in, she did something harder than trapping: she stepped back. That decision led to the creation of OAR's Neighborhood Cat Ambassador Program, which embeds trained volunteers directly into high-need zip codes identified through shelter and rescue data. Ambassadors walk their streets, distribute flyers with QR codes linking to a community cat census, connect caregivers to resources, mediate neighbor disputes, and trap for those who can't. The result is a program that feels less like a service and more like a movement — and one that's bringing neighbors together in the process.
Tonya also shares an inspiring story from a mobile home park 20 miles outside Cincinnati, where she spent last spring trapping 58 cats. Earlier this year, the park reached back out — not to ask for help, but to learn how to do it themselves. They've since purchased their own traps, gone door to door, posted on social media, and started bringing cats in weekly. That's the long game Tonya is playing: not just TNR, but teaching communities to sustain the work themselves.
Press Play Now For:
- How fostering neonatal kittens led Tonya to TNR — and a complete career change
- Why Tonya insisted on doing the work herself first before bringing in volunteers, and what she learned from that approach.
- The story of Sonny, the neighborhood cat who introduced a whole street of strangers to each other
- How OAR's Neighborhood Cat Ambassador Program works, who it recruits, and why ambassadors stay engaged longer than traditional trapping volunteers
- A mobile home park success story: from one organization doing the work to a community sustaining TNR on their own
- Why "when something's predictable, it's preventable" is the mindset shift that defines neighborhood-based cat management
- How to find common ground with neighbors who hate cats and neighbors who love them
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