Photos courtesy of Dallas Animal Services.
Mount Auburn neighbor Rebecca Kornblum insists that she doesn’t try to find stray cats — they find her.
“My husband jokes it’s my superpower to find animals,” Kornblum says. “I’m literally never looking. I just always see them.”
The former veterinary technician and Dallas Animal Advisory Commission member was long active in trapping, neutering and returning (TNR) community cats but has tried to step back recently for lack of time. Still, she cares for 14 cats on her property, including multiple with illnesses, and co-founded a nonprofit rescue organization. She says people still ask for her help.
In June, Kornblum attended a public meeting led by Dallas Animal Services (DAS) at the Lakewood Branch Library and was disappointed to hear the same things that were said 20 years ago.
Neighbors expressed frustration with being overrun by outdoor cats, a process to get service request numbers that helps them access spay and neutering services for free, lacking clinical options and the feeling that they weren’t being listened to as the City continues to have the same issues. DAS officials explained they are doing the best they can with what they have while trying to promote education among animal caregivers.
Rock meets hard place.
“I need a place to go,” Lakewood Heights neighbor Jennifer Woulfe said during the meeting. “I love (Texas Coalition for Animal Protection). I do most of my stuff at TCAP, but there have been times that I have to get there at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. I have to wait, and I can’t easily do that. So, for me, I need a place that’s an easier option to go. I’m willing to do it. You have free help right here, free. I’m doing it for free because I know it’s important for the cats. I know it’s important to my community.”
Any animal reproducing quickly and unfettered leads to a bigger population with higher risks for “disease transmission, parasites, sanitation concerns, nuisance behaviors,” says Amanda Earl, DAS assistant director of operations.
“One of the primary benefits of TNR is that participating cats are vaccinated against rabies,” Earl says. “They’ve been sterilized. They’ve at least been looked at by a veterinarian. They have an ear tip so that we can identify those animals. It does help stabilize colony size. It does help reduce nuisance behaviors, but there are only so many resources.”
And it can be easy for colonies to grow out of control. Almost 8,500 service requests regarding stray cats were placed between August 2023 and September 2025 throughout Dallas but especially in East Dallas, Oak Cliff, Downtown and other southern Dallas areas, according to a City report.
“A lot of elderly people live alone, and then a cat will show up, and they feed it, and then it has kittens, and then the kittens have kittens,” Kornblum says. “Suddenly, they’re on social security, and they’ve got 20 cats on their porch.”
TCAP doesn’t have an affordable spay and neuter clinic in Dallas. The most accessible locations for our neighbors are in Garland and Allen. To participate in TCAP’s Feral Fix Program, it is recommended to arrive “well before 8 a.m.” to secure one or more of the 12 slots available, according to the clinic’s website.
“And I’m telling you, it’s a hard stop at 12,” Woulfe says.
If you miss your chance, you have to try again or schedule an appointment (which can be difficult as TNRers can’t predict how many cats they are able to trap) and pay $20, according to TCAP’s website. And not all clinics perform feral cat surgeries every weekday.
At Spay Neuter Network on South Buckner Boulevard, cats are accepted first-come, first-served on open surgery days until capacity is reached. This service costs the same as for owned cats, unless a Dallas resident has a service request number, in which case the spay or neuter is free and funded by DAS, according to the clinic’s website. TNRers can get a service request number through 311, but some said at the Lakewood meeting that the process to receive that is inefficient. (Woulfe says TCAP also offers free services for Dallas residents with a service request number.)
Dallas Animal Services is putting forth a new community cat ordinance to be passed by the Quality of Life, Arts, & Culture Committee and the Dallas City Council.
The ordinance would set clear definitions and expectations for responsible community cat caregiving. Earl heavily emphasized that it would not create a City-run TNR program.
“It’s supposed to also establish standards for community cats participating in the TNR program,” she says. “Sterilization, rabies vaccination, ear tipping, microchipping, all of the little things that people don’t realize are part of managing a community cat colony. Ultimately, it’s intended to provide clarity and consistency and accountability, while supporting community cat management, education, partnerships, responsible caregiving.”
“They receive information about participating partner organizations that will provide services like sterilization, vaccination, ear tipping, depending on funding or appointment availability,” Earl says of the service request number system. “It helps connect the residents with available resources while allowing DAS to continue to support all of that through community partnerships. It also helps us track the community concerns and develop that heat map or identify trends, where they’re at and to better understand where our outreach and education efforts may be needed.”
And no, the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) of Texas, headquartered in Dallas, is currently not accepting trap, neuter, return surgeries, according to its website. Woulfe says SPCA had a TNR program but stopped after the pandemic.
“(A neighbor) managed to get connected with SPCA, and they were doing transport,” she says, though this wasn’t an option provided to everyone at all times. “We would actually trap the cats. They would come in a van. They would pick up the cats in the morning, take them, and bring them back and release them. So we had help.”
Some advocates think Dallas Animal Services should participate in TNR. The department calls the practice “the only proven, humane method to control outdoor cat populations” on the City’s website but currently isn’t proposing a City-run TNR program.
“How amazing would it be if there was a feral cat program at the City of Dallas, and there was a feral cat coordinator?” Kornblum says. “(If) we had all of these traps, and people who trap could go to DAS, borrow traps, take the cats that they trap to DAS, get them TNR’ed and return them. Or even have animal control officers who do this instead of being dependent on just regular, individual people.”
But that’s not something that Dallas Animal Services will do anytime soon.
“We would need the staff support. We would need the funding support. We would need community support. We’d need those partnerships,” Earl says.
Put plainly, the department doesn’t have the medical staff to manage those surgeries. Recruiting veterinarians tends to be a challenge since there are less than 40 American Veterinary Medical Association-accredited colleges in the U.S. On top of that, shelter medicine tends to be a niche study, Earl says, and filling those roles is difficult. Not every vet can manage 30 or more surgeries in a day. Case in point, Dallas Animal Services has had a full-time veterinarian vacancy since last fall.
“We can’t compete with private enterprise,” Earl says. “We can’t pay off their student tuition costs that they’ve incurred. We can’t offer them the same salaries and benefits as others because we are a municipal organization.”
As of writing this, the department currently has veterinarians for treatment (one full-time and one temporary part-time), telehealth, and forensics, plus two surgeons, one full-time and one temporary part-time. Compared to the almost 29,000 animals DAS takes in per year, this is a small team, Earl says. They have specialized roles that include providing intake exams, emergency care, illness and injury treatment, surgeries, and medical support for fosters.
Dallas Animal Services also partners with organizations to expand their staff’s bandwidth just to care for shelter animals, and that’s still not enough to do TNR surgery.
“It’s not through lack of desire,” Earl says. “It is lack of resources right now, and that’s nobody’s fault.”
Feline concerns are handled by the community engagement team. Among other tasks, these staffers respond to cat-related calls and evaluate situations, point locals toward resources and aim to educate the public. In fiscal year 2024-25, the City used to have a specific program for unowned cats, but that was discontinued because of budget cuts, Earl says. The program included the so-called Team Tabby, in which 1,451 cats were fixed, preventing thousands of kitten births and newborn intakes, according to the City report.
TNRers interviewed by the Lakewood/East Dallas Advocate are mostly sympathetic to DAS’s position and would like to see the department get the resources needed.
“Apparently, we need to start attending city council meetings and being a voice for DAS and for these animals because a lot of people aren’t speaking up,” Woulfe says.
Dallas County’s veterinary care accessibility score is 66 out of 100, and, while not the worst, well below that of neighboring counties. DAS is working to help identify where those deserts are and rebuilding infrastructure to better manage animals in the shelter and outside of it, Earl says.
Far Northeast Dallas neighbor Mary German started TNRing on her street before connecting with other neighborhoods, including Oak Cliff, Arlington and Grand Prairie. She manages colonies in Dallas, Garland and Mesquite, feeding the cats even on special occasions and despite challenges brought on by apartment complex rules. She noticed Hispanic communities tended to require the most help.
“There’s a lot of need, not only with the trapping but also getting medical,” German says.
Earl says Dallas leadership has been supportive, but even in a perfect world, she imagines that everyone would step up for DAS, including businesses and neighbors.
“We can’t do it by ourselves,” she says. “We can keep spinning our wheels, we can keep doing sterilizations, we can keep taking the owners’ surrenders, but our most important thing should be to help keep animals in their homes and help provide those resources. But we can’t be the one that’s providing all the resources. We’re not that big. Our community is huge.”
On that point, Earl’s message to those practicing TNR is “keep doing what you do. If we can help, we will.”
