ACC management justifies their policies by claiming that "research" supporting those policies has been adopted nationwide. What management is talking about is called "return-to-field" (RTF) programs, sometimes called "shelter-neuter-return" (SNR) programs. It turns out the "research" is really just a survey of what many shelters are doing to manage their outdoor cat populations (even though ACC has historically been much more humane in its treatment of cats than "most shelters"): "Healthy, free-roaming cats who lack ID and are brought to a shelter are evaluated for eligibility, sterilized, vaccinated, ear-tipped and returned to the location where they were found." In other words, ALL healthy, friendly outdoor cats without ID are treated like feral or "community" cats in an almost identical process called "Trap-Neuter-Return" (TNR).

However, ACC has not even adopted this "return-to-field" policy:

• Friendly cats cannot even be brought in to ACC, so they can't be scanned for a microchip ID, evaluated for adoption, sterilized or vaccinated.

Other elements of RTF include:

• Staff are allowed discretion to determine the best course of action for each cat on a case-by-case basis. Again, ACC does not even allow members of the public to bring cats in for such an evaluation.
• Cats are not to be returned to unsafe sites. However, ACC has ordered cats returned to extremely unsafe sites.
• When cats are processed by a shelter and returned to their habitat, participating shelters can utilize their full capacity. Yet ACC is nowhere near maximizing the capacity of its half-empty shelter.

Don't be fooled. Playing the "research" card is a bluff, a red herring, a pathetic and inhumane ruse by ACC to save labor and operations costs and make life easier for staff and management.

Individuals and rescue groups are standing by to adopt unclaimed, friendly, lost or abandoned cats, but ACC is not giving them — or the cats — the chance.