Outdoor cats are all over Vermillion. The Heartland Humane Society in Yankton is the closest animal shelter to Vermillion and works with the city and any volunteers through their Trap Neuter Release Program (TNR).
Dana Merrigan is a veterinary technician and intake coordinator at the Heartland Humane Society and helps with the TNR program.
The program traps outside wild cats and bring them to the humane society to be checked on, neutered or spayed then released back to the location they were trapped at.
“We don’t try to take outside cats in to adopt out. We’ve done that in the past, and outside cats really do not want to be indoor cats. They’re used to being outside. They just don’t know how to act, they’re not happy, and they wanted to be back outside,” Merrigan said.