A Storm Plan for a Community Cat Colony: What the Published Guidance Actually Says, Where It Contradicts Itself, and the Three Decisions None of It Makes for You

A colony is not a pet. It is a group of unowned cats living at a site you probably do not own, fed on a schedule you keep, and known to you individually in a way nobody else in the neighborhood could reproduce. When a hurricane, a tropical storm or a serious wind and flood event is forecast, almost everything written for pet households stops applying at the second sentence: you cannot put these cats in carriers, most of them will not let you within arm’s reach, and the animals themselves are frequently the only ones who know where the safe ground is.

There is guidance for this. That is the first thing to say plainly, because a great deal of writing on community cats in disasters opens by claiming the sector ignores them, and it does not. Five organizations publish detailed, physical, do-this-on-Thursday instructions for a colony before and after a storm. Alley Cat Allies publishes two pages. Neighborhood Cats publishes a page excerpted from its own handbook. Humane World for Animals publishes one. Bideawee publishes the NYC Feral Cat Initiative’s disaster material. And Best Friends Animal Society devotes an entire numbered chapter of its Community Cat Programs Handbook to it.

Those five publishers are not five independent voices, and it matters enough to say before anything else. Best Friends’ chapter carries two footnotes, and they point at two different publishers. The first covers the preparedness and hurricane sections and reads that the information was adapted from the NYC Feral Cat Initiative website, which is the material Bideawee publishes. The second covers the stand-in caregiver section and reads that the information was adapted from the Alley Cat Allies website. So the lineage count is not fixed at four across the whole page; it depends on which question you are asking. On trapping and on storm surge, Best Friends and Bideawee are one voice. On the caregiver handoff, Best Friends and Alley Cat Allies are one voice. Each section below says which.

The problem is not absence. The problem is that no one of those documents reconciles the others, they are not all saying the same thing, and one of them contradicts itself between two of its own pages on the single most physical instruction in the whole set. A caretaker who reads one page and acts on it has a plan. A caretaker who reads all five and notices the differences has a better one, and that is what this page is for.

What This Page Is, and What It Is Not

This is a storm, flood and high-wind page for an ongoing colony at a known site. It covers the physical work at the site, the food and water decisions, the disagreement about whether to trap anyone, the legal position of a caretaker who owns neither the cats nor the ground, and the handoff to a backup caretaker.

Three boundaries, named up front so you do not read the wrong page for your problem:

Cold weather is a different page. The richest colony material online is winter material: straw, insulation, keeping water from freezing, shovelling out shelters after snow. This page touches winter only where a winter instruction and a storm instruction collide, which happens exactly once and is the subject of the very next section.

One missing cat is a different page. If a specific cat has vanished and you are trying to confirm it is alive and in the area, the station-and-camera method, what a motion camera can and cannot tell you, and the documented problem of a food station drawing wildlife are all worked through on our page about a feeding station and trail camera for a displaced cat. That page is about finding one animal. This one is about managing a group at a fixed site.

An animal on your own property that will not be caught is a different page. A barn cat, or any animal that has never been confined and will never be handled, is a provisioning-in-place problem on land you control, and our page on barn cats and animals you cannot catch is written for exactly that and states in its own subtitle that it is about provisioning in place and not about releasing. It quotes several of the same colony documents this page uses, and it is careful to name each time that those instructions were written for a managed colony with a caregiver, which is the population it does not have and this page does. The distinction to hold is short: that page is your animals on your ground; this page is unowned animals at a site that usually belongs to someone else, with a caretaker who has no legal standing over either. If you are reading about a colony you feed, you are on the right page. If you are reading about the cat that lives in your own barn, that one is.

Getting into a closed area is a different page. Neighborhood Cats and Humane World both tell a caretaker who cannot reach a closed colony site to go through the local police precinct, and Best Friends tells caregivers to wait for local authorities to lift travel restrictions. The machinery behind that, meaning hard and soft closures, re-entry passes, escorted access and who actually has authority to let you in, is covered on our page about re-entry access to reach a pet in a closed zone. The colony-specific note is short and appears near the end of this page.

Finally, a scope limit this site holds everywhere. There is no veterinarian on staff here. Where a source publishes a veterinary fact it is quoted as such, and where an animal needs care the instruction is to get it to a veterinarian. This page publishes no treatment, no dosing and no home care, and where a source publishes those, they have been deliberately left out.

The One Instruction That Reverses Between Seasons

Start here. Several conclusions on this page are the site’s own rather than any publisher’s, and each is labelled where it appears. This is the one that is actionable in about five minutes: a reversal that is visible only when you read two pages by one publisher next to each other.

Neighborhood Cats publishes a winter shelter page. Under the heading Placement, it states:

“Ideally, to prevent flooding, raise the shelters off the ground with pallets or bricks, making sure they remain stable and not wobbly. Most cat shelters are lightweight so weigh them down by placing heavy objects on top, like concrete bricks, though of course avoid putting too much weight on and damaging the roof.”

That is sound advice for a cold, still, snowy month, and a great many colony shelters in the United States have concrete bricks on their roofs right now because a caretaker read something very like it.

The same organization publishes a storm preparation page, excerpted from the Neighborhood Cats TNR Handbook. On the same physical question it reaches the opposite conclusion:

“High winds present another potential hazard. Tie shelters and feeding stations to permanent structures, like a fence, to anchor them or else wedge them tightly into a secure place. Feral cat shelters are often light and need to be weighed down. But in high winds, heavy objects can be dislodged and create a danger, so be careful about placing anything on top of the shelters. Tying the shelters and feeding stations down is safer.”

Read those two passages next to each other. They agree on the diagnosis, which is that a cat shelter is too light to stay where you put it. They disagree on the treatment. The winter page says weigh it down from above; the storm page says a weight above is itself the hazard, and to tie the shelter down instead.

This is not one organization being careless. Each page is correct for the season it was written about. A concrete brick on a shelter roof in February is a brick that keeps the roof on. The same brick in a seventy mile an hour gust is a projectile with a cat underneath it.

Humane World for Animals publishes the storm-side caution too, and names the objects:

“Tie shelters and feeders to permanent structures (such as a fence or a sturdy tree) to anchor them or wedge them tightly into a secure space. Be careful about placing heavy objects (e.g., bricks, boards or rocks) on top of shelters to keep them in place, as these may pose a danger in high winds.”

So the direction of the fix is published by a second organization, in its own wording, with its own list of objects. One honest caveat on how independent that is: the Neighborhood Cats storm page closes by referring readers to the Humane Society of the United States’ disaster preparedness page, which is the organization now called Humane World for Animals, so these two are not strangers to each other. Neither page quotes or cites the other on this particular instruction, and the wording is not shared, but a claim that two entirely unrelated sources agree would be more than this page can establish.

Here is the join, and it is this site’s own reasoning rather than an instruction any of these pages prints. No published page tells a caretaker who followed the winter instruction to go back and undo it. The winter page does not carry a storm caveat. The storm page does not mention that its reader may have spent the winter doing the opposite. Nobody is wrong and nobody has told you what to do. So: if there are bricks, blocks, boards or rocks sitting on your shelter roofs from cold-weather setup, and a wind event is in the forecast, take them off, and secure the shelters by tying them to something permanent instead.

And then deal with what you just removed, because a loose brick on the ground beside the shelter is the same hazard one step away. Both organizations say so in their own words. Neighborhood Cats: “Likewise, check the general area for loose objects which could become airborne and remove them.” Humane World for Animals: “Secure or remove objects (such as chairs, potted plants or garden utensils) in and near the colony that could become airborne during high winds or get washed away.”

If you take one action from this entire page, that is the one, and it is free.

What the Five Organizations Actually Publish

Here is the full comparison, issuer by issuer, with nothing averaged and nothing merged. Where a row is blank, that organization does not address it in the documents read for this page, which is a statement about those documents and not about the organization.

Instruction	Alley Cat Allies	Neighborhood Cats	Humane World for Animals	Best Friends (CCP Handbook Ch. 28)	Bideawee / NYC Feral Cat Initiative
Move shelters and stations to higher ground	Yes, “If you live in a flood-prone area”	Yes, and adds the scope: “within the cats’ territory, if at all possible”	Yes, “in areas that may flood”	Yes, “get in the habit of placing shelters and feeding stations on higher ground”	Yes, “if possible”
Raise them off the ground	Not addressed	Yes, on “Wooden shipping pallets” or cinder blocks, whether moved or not	Yes, “Wooden shipping pallets, available at some lumber yards, are ideal”	Not addressed	Yes, “elevated off the ground for added protection against flooding or heavy snowfall”
A ground-clearance height	None published	None published. A functional test instead: high enough that ground water or snow cannot reach the doorways	None published	None published	None published
Anchor by tying	Not addressed	Yes, “to permanent structures, like a fence”	Yes, “(such as a fence or a sturdy tree)”	Not addressed	Not addressed for the shelter itself. Publishes a tie-down instruction for loose objects: “Remove or tie down any objects in and near your colony that could become airborne during high winds”
Weights on top of the shelter	Not addressed	Cautioned against in high winds (storm page); recommended for winter (winter shelter page)	Cautioned against: “may pose a danger in high winds”	Not addressed	Does not say where. Publishes “Add tarps, weights, and other protective gear to outdoor shelters and feeding stations” with no placement and no wind caution
Turn openings away from the surge	Yes, “away from the storm surge or toward higher ground”	Doorways facing “a wall or similar solid structure and not open space”	Openings facing a wall, or two shelters facing each other “no more than a foot apart”	Yes, “away from the direction that the surge will come from”	Yes, “away from the direction surge will come from”
Tarps	Not addressed	Not addressed	Yes, tied at an angle, overhang past the door, “Hammer stakes securely”	Not addressed	“Add tarps, weights, and other protective gear”
Extra food before the storm	“Fill multiple food and water bowls”	“an extra supply of dry food” that is “enough to last a few days”	“Leave extra dry food in covered feeding stations”	“provide plenty of food for the cats”	A quantity: “a 3–7-day supply of food and water at your feeding station”
Food inside the shelter	Not addressed	Yes, “in the back inner corners as far as possible from the door”	Yes, “as far from the openings as possible”	Not addressed	Not addressed
Water inside the shelter	Not addressed	No: “do not put any water inside the shelter”	No, and gives the reason as keeping the shelter and cats warm and dry	Not addressed	Not addressed
A second, cat-sized escape route	Yes, from under a shed or building, “Keep openings cat-size”	Yes, inside a shed or garage, plus elevated perches	Not addressed	Yes, “(cat-sized) escape routes if any get blocked”	Not addressed
A laminated managed-colony sign	Yes, with “a cell phone number or other number where you can be reached”	Not addressed	Yes, “alerting any emergency responders that this is a managed group of cats”	Not addressed	Not addressed
Trap some cats before the storm	No: “do not try to trap and contain unsocialized (or feral) community cats”	Not addressed	Yes, friendly cats and kittens young enough to socialize	Yes, vulnerable cats, friendly only, with gates	Yes, pregnant, young kittens and elderly, with gates
A named backup caretaker	Yes, plus a buddy system and an emergency contact card	Not addressed	Yes, with the contact card in your wallet and on the refrigerator	Yes, with a five-part information handoff and a rehearsal, footnoted as adapted from Alley Cat Allies	Yes, “a team of caretakers”
A colony record with photos	Yes, and publishes free forms for it	Yes: “Compile a list, including descriptions and photos”	Yes, “complete with detailed descriptions and photos”	Yes, plus location, injuries, sleeping and eating places and routines	Yes, and points readers to Alley Cat Allies’ free tracking system

The rows that matter most are the ones where the cells are not identical. Take them in order.

Higher ground, with a limit nobody else states

All five organizations say to get the shelters and the stations onto higher ground if there is any. Only Neighborhood Cats bounds it, saying to move them “to higher ground within the cats’ territory, if at all possible.”

That clause is doing real work, and it is the difference between helping and abandoning. A colony’s territory is where the cats know the exits, the hiding places and the sight lines. A shelter carried three blocks uphill to the good drainage is a shelter in a place your cats have no reason to go, run by a person who has just decided for them.

Alley Cat Allies makes the same point from the other direction, in a sentence that is easy to skim past: “Community cats’ best chance of survival is using their own instincts and abilities to respond to changing circumstances. Like wildlife, feral cats will instinctively seek higher ground during floods.” Read that as the design constraint on everything else on this page. You are adjusting the furniture in a house the cats already know, not relocating the household.

Best Friends makes the strongest version of that argument, and it is worth quoting in full because it is the one that governs when you are tempted to do something larger:

“Do not attempt to move or relocate healthy community cat groups to get them out of harm’s way in the event of a disaster. Animals are very resilient and can find ways to survive. Their best chance of survival is for you to continue to support their needs after the disaster.”

Raise them, but on what, and how high

Two organizations name materials. Neighborhood Cats: “Wooden shipping pallets are ideal for this purpose.” and “Cinder blocks will work as well.” Humane World for Animals names shipping pallets as well, adding that they are available at some lumber yards.

On height, all five of these organizations publish nothing. That is a statement about the documents read for this page rather than a claim about the whole literature. It is not an oversight to be filled in either, because this is the single most likely place for a wrong number to arrive on a page like this one, so read the next paragraph carefully.

Ground-clearance figures for cat shelters circulate widely. They do not come from any of the organizations quoted on this page. What Neighborhood Cats does publish is a functional test, which is better than a number because it adapts to the site: “Raise them high enough to prevent ground water or snow from reaching up to the doorways.”

There is a second trap immediately behind the first. Neighborhood Cats’ winter shelter page contains inch measurements. It tells builders to cut a “6 in. x 6 in. opening in a short side of the box” and that “The bottom of the doorway should be a few inches above the bottom of the box to prevent flooding.” Both of those are dimensions inside the shelter box: how big the doorway is, and how high its sill sits above the shelter’s own floor. Neither is a measurement between the ground and the underside of the shelter. Carrying either one across into a ground-clearance rule would be taking a number that was measuring one thing and publishing it as though it measured another, on a decision that determines whether a shelter with cats in it floods.

So the honest instruction is the functional one. Set the shelter on the pallet or the blocks, look at where the doorway sill now sits, and ask whether water standing or running at this spot in a heavy event would reach it. If you have local flood mapping or a county floodplain office, that is a better source for how high the water gets at your site than anything published nationally about cats.

The openings, which all five address

This is the least contested instruction in the set. Alley Cat Allies: “If appropriate, turn all openings for community cat shelters and feeding stations away from the storm surge or toward higher ground. If possible, move them to slightly higher, protected ground nearby.” Best Friends and Bideawee publish the same surge-direction rule, which is one lineage stated twice rather than two organizations agreeing. Neighborhood Cats generalizes it to weather rather than surge, saying to position shelters “so their doorways are facing a wall or similar solid structure and not open space.” and offering the pair arrangement: two shelters with their entrances facing each other, no more than a foot apart. Humane World for Animals publishes that same pair arrangement.

Note what this asks of you in practice, which none of them says: you need to know the surge or wind direction for this specific event before you can point the doorways, and that comes from your forecast office rather than from any colony guidance. Turning shelters to face a wall is a general-purpose version you can do at any time. Turning them away from the surge is a decision you make when the storm has a track.

Food and water, where two organizations publish a pair of instructions

The food rules are where the colony case genuinely differs from anything written for pets, and two organizations from different lineages publish the same pair: put food inside the shelter, and keep water out of it.

Neighborhood Cats states it in one passage. It opens with the quantity and the timing:

“In case you’re unable to return to the colony site right away, put out an extra supply of dry food – enough to last a few days - before the storm arrives and leave a plentiful supply of water.”

It then names gravity feeders and automatic waterers as the way to hold that supply, cross-referencing its own handbook chapter on them, and continues:

“Be sure the feeding station is protected in the same manner as the shelters – raised off the ground with the doorway shielded and located in close proximity to the shelters. Also, fill plastic containers or bowls with dry food and put them inside the shelters, placing them in the back inner corners as far as possible from the door. This will make the food accessible to the cats during the storm. However, do not put any water inside the shelter – it would likely spill and create a health risk for the cats by getting them wet or making the interior of the shelter damp.”

Humane World for Animals publishes the same pairing with its own reasoning:

“Leave extra dry food in covered feeding stations in case you can’t return soon and place extra kibble inside the cats’ shelter, as far from the openings as possible. Don’t put water in the shelter—it’s important that the shelter and cats remain warm and dry.”

Both give the same negative and roughly the same positive, and they arrive at the water rule from the same physical fact: a wet cat in an enclosed box in bad weather is worse off than a dry cat that has to step outside to drink.

Humane World then draws a distinction the others do not, and it is worth carrying because it flips the water instruction depending on the hazard: “Leave out several bowls of water, particularly if your concern is fire rather than a storm.” A fire is a heat and smoke event in which standing water at the site may be the only water; a flood is an event in which the site is about to be full of water you do not want the cats drinking. Same colony, opposite emphasis, and only one publisher says so.

On quantity, exactly one organization attaches a figure to what you leave at the station. Bideawee, carrying the NYC Feral Cat Initiative’s material, states: “In case you have to evacuate, leave a 3–7-day supply of food and water at your feeding station.”

That is a range from one publisher for one scenario, which is an evacuation by the caretaker. Read the other four on the same question and none of them puts a number on the station: Neighborhood Cats says “enough to last a few days”. Alley Cat Allies says “Fill multiple food and water bowls in case you have to evacuate and can’t return immediately.” Best Friends says to “provide plenty of food for the cats, since it may be a few days or even weeks before anyone can return to the area, depending on the scope and scale of the disaster.”

That last clause from Best Friends is the one that should change how you read the others. The three-to-seven-day figure is a starting point for a caretaker who expects to come back that week. Best Friends is telling you the return may be weeks, and it does not attach a number to that, which is honest, because nobody can know in advance which event you are in.

One qualification, because it is easy to read the Bideawee range as a lone datum and it is not. The same two figures appear in two published supply-kit lists, which are a different instrument: the supplies you keep packed to take with you, not the supplies you leave behind. Bideawee’s colony emergency supply kit names “3–7 days’ worth of cat food” and a “7-day supply of bottled water”. Alley Cat Allies’ emergency supply kit, on the same page this section already quotes for the multiple-bowls instruction, names “Pet food (three to seven days’ worth; be sure to rotate out of your kit as needed to keep it fresh)” and “Bottled water (seven-day supply per person and animal)”. So three to seven days is not one organization’s idiosyncratic number. What neither kit list is, and what this page will not turn it into, is a rule for how much food to pile into a feeding station before a storm.

There is a real cost to leaving a large amount of food at an outdoor station, and it is not hypothetical. Our page on the feeding station and trail camera method works through the published evidence that a food station on the ground draws wildlife, including a peer-reviewed study conducted at a feral cat colony feeding station, and what that means for the person servicing the station. That evidence is not restated here. It is directly relevant to the decision on this page, so read it before you decide how much food to leave and where to put it, and note that the elevated-food finding in that study is a second, independent reason to raise the station rather than only a flood reason.

Tarps, and the one instruction with a fixing spec

Humane World for Animals is the only organization here that publishes a tarping method, and it is specific:

“Cover shelters and feeding stations with heavy tarps to keep out driving rain. Tie tarps at an angle and extend any overhang over shelter doors so water can run off and away from shelter doors. Hammer stakes securely and/or tie the tarps to a permanent structure.”

Bideawee’s version is one clause: “Add tarps, weights, and other protective gear to outdoor shelters and feeding stations.” Neighborhood Cats, Alley Cat Allies and Best Friends do not address tarps in the documents read for this page.

Note what is missing from every version read for this page, because it matters for anyone about to buy something: no rated cordage, no tie-down working-load figure, no stake length, no stake depth, and no guidance on what to tie to when the only permanent structure available is a fence that is not yours. The instruction is real and it is published; the specification behind it is not. That gap is genuine, and this site is not going to close it by inventing a number, because a tie-down rating is exactly the sort of figure that reads as authoritative and fails silently.

Two practical cautions this page will make in its own voice rather than attribute. A tarp is a sail. Anything you tie at an angle over a shelter door is a surface for the wind to work on, and it is attached to the shelter you are trying to keep in place. And a stake hammered into ground you do not own is a hole in someone else’s property, which is the subject of a later section on this page.

The signs, and what they quietly tell a passing official

Two organizations publish the sign instruction. Alley Cat Allies: “If possible, place a laminated sign on the cat’s house or feeding station letting rescuers know that this is a managed colony site and that you are the contact person (provide a cell phone number or other number where you can be reached).” Humane World for Animals: “Post laminated signs on or near cat shelters and feeding stations alerting any emergency responders that this is a managed group of cats and include contact information.”

The purpose is obvious and good. A responder who finds eartipped cats at a stocked station with a sign on it treats the site differently from an abandoned pile of bowls, and the phone number is how a rescued cat gets back to the person who knows it.

A second consequence, which is this site’s own reasoning and appears in none of the sources: that sign is also a signed statement, posted at the site, that a named person regularly feeds these cats. Depending on where you live, regular feeding is part of the legal definition of a keeper, with duties attached. That is not a reason to skip the sign, and this page is not telling you to skip it. It is a reason to know your own local rules before you post your phone number on someone else’s fence, and the legal section below is where that goes.

Whether to Trap Anyone Before the Storm

This is the hardest question on the page and it is not settled. Anyone who tells you there is one right answer has read one document.

Here are the four published positions, in the publishers’ own words. Neighborhood Cats is the one document in this set that publishes no view on trapping cats before a storm. It does tell caretakers to trap afterwards, for injury, which is a different decision and appears further down this page.

Alley Cat Allies says do not. On its disaster preparedness page, in the section headed for readers who need to evacuate: “Bring your pets with you, but do not try to trap and contain unsocialized (or feral) community cats.” The same organization frames the whole approach that way earlier on its fact sheet, stating that for community cats “evacuating with them is not feasible or recommended.” The sentence immediately after gives its reasoning: “These cats have powerful survival instincts during disaster situations, and the best way to help them is to provide support around those instincts and plan ahead to keep track of them.”

Humane World for Animals says trap on a socialization test.

“If possible, trap the friendly cats and kittens young enough to be socialized prior to the storm and take them to a safe place. Don’t fret over leaving the unsocial and feral ones, as they have excellent survival instincts.”

Bideawee, publishing the NYC Feral Cat Initiative’s material, says trap on a vulnerability test, with a gate.

“Take extra steps to protect the most vulnerable cats in your colony. Before Hurricane Sandy, the NYC Feral Cat Initiative advised caretakers to trap pregnant cats, young kittens, and/or elderly cats so they could wait out the storm safely indoors. Do this only if you are either not going to be evacuated or can take the cats with you in the event of evacuation. Friendly cats and young kittens who are trapped may be prepared for adoption.”

That last sentence is worth reading slowly, because it describes an outcome the caretaker may not have intended when they set the trap. A storm is the reason the cat came inside; adoption is a separate decision about the rest of its life, and this page has no view on it beyond saying that a trap set for a weekend can end somewhere else.

Best Friends says the same as Bideawee, plus a friendliness filter and a capacity gate.

“With that said, take extra steps to protect the most vulnerable cats, such as pregnant cats, young kittens and elderly cats. If they can safely wait out the storm indoors somewhere, that might be the best option. However, do this only for friendly cats and only if you are either not going to be evacuated or can take the cats with you when you evacuate.”

And, in its hurricanes and flooding section, for the case where there is no higher ground at all: trapping and taking the cats inside temporarily is worth considering, “but only if you are not in danger of being evacuated and can realistically, safely and comfortably house the cats for at least a week.”

Bideawee publishes the same no-higher-ground fallback: “If there is no higher ground near the colony, consider trapping and taking the cats inside temporarily, but only if you are not in danger of being evacuated.”

Four documents, but not four independent voices

Before you weigh these, know how many opinions you are actually looking at.

Best Friends’ Chapter 28 carries two footnotes. The first is attached to the section containing its trapping guidance and reads: “The information in this section and the next was adapted from the NYC Feral Cat Initiative website.” Bideawee’s page is the NYC Feral Cat Initiative’s material. So Best Friends and Bideawee are one lineage published twice, and treating them as two organizations independently reaching the same conclusion would overstate the agreement.

Worth recording, because it goes to how durable that lineage is: the URL Best Friends footnotes is animalalliancenyc.org, and on August 19, 2026 that address returned a 404 through a redirect. The content survives on Bideawee’s Feral Cat Initiative section, which is where it was read for this page. Nothing in that undermines the guidance. It does mean the chapter’s own citation no longer resolves to the document it names, which is worth knowing if you go looking for the original.

That leaves three positions from three lineages:

1. Alley Cat Allies: do not trap and contain unsocialized or feral community cats. Note the placement: that sentence appears under the heading for readers who need to evacuate, and Alley Cat Allies publishes no separate instruction for a caretaker who is staying. So how far it reaches is a question the document does not answer.
2. Humane World for Animals: trap on socialization. Friendly cats and kittens young enough to be socialized go somewhere safe; leave the unsocial ones.
3. NYC Feral Cat Initiative, published by Bideawee and adapted by Best Friends: trap on vulnerability. Pregnant cats, young kittens and elderly cats, restricted by Best Friends to friendly cats, and gated on your own evacuation status and your housing capacity.

Positions 2 and 3 select on different properties of the cat. A pregnant feral queen who has never let you touch her qualifies under the vulnerability criterion as Bideawee states it and fails the friendliness filter Best Friends adds. A friendly six-month-old tom is caught by the socialization criterion and not by the vulnerability one. These are not the same rule stated twice.

Position 1 is not a milder version of the others. It is a different instruction, at least within the scope it is printed in. And it is worth noticing that Alley Cat Allies is the organization publishing the free colony forms this page recommends further down, which is a good reminder that citing an organization’s tool is not endorsing every position it holds, and vice versa.

The gates matter more than the criteria

Read all three again and notice that the qualifying conditions are almost entirely about you, not about the cat.

Bideawee: only if you are not going to be evacuated, or can take the cats with you. Best Friends: only for friendly cats, only if you are not in danger of being evacuated or can take them with you, and only if you can house them “realistically, safely and comfortably” for at least a week. Humane World’s version is gated on “If possible” and on having a safe place to take them.

A caretaker in a mandatory evacuation zone who traps four cats on Thursday has not protected them. They have created four confined animals in a house nobody will be in, which is a worse outcome than the storm they were trapped to avoid.

Be precise about how many of the three lineages actually write that gate down, because it is fewer than it looks. Exactly one does: the NYC Feral Cat Initiative lineage, published by Bideawee and adapted by Best Friends, which is the lineage carrying the vulnerability criterion. Humane World does not. Its instruction is gated on “If possible” and on taking the cats “to a safe place”, and it never mentions whether the caretaker is leaving. Alley Cat Allies never gates trapping at all; it forbids it, in a section headed for readers who need to evacuate, which makes the evacuation context implicit rather than a stated condition. So putting your own evacuation status first is one lineage’s written rule plus this page’s own reading of the other two, and it is set out that way below.

Alley Cat Allies’ colony tracking form also publishes a note that bears on the socialization criterion, printed as a footnote on the form itself: “Alley Cat Allies does not recommend attempting to socialize adult feral cats or kittens older than four months of age.” The sentence directly after it names the alternative: “Kittens who are at least 8 weeks or who weigh two pounds can be simply trapped, neutered, and returned to their colony.” That is a statement about socialization and TNR programs rather than about storms, and it is quoted here with that scope attached. It is relevant because it tells you where that organization draws the line on which cats are candidates for a home at all, which is the same line Humane World’s socialization criterion is drawing under time pressure.

What none of them tells you, and this page’s own answer

Every source above hands you a category. None of them tells you what to do when the category is bigger than your capacity, and that is the situation almost every caretaker who tries this will actually be in. Four cats qualify. You have two carriers, one bathroom and a week of food.

What follows is this site’s own reasoning, not a published protocol, and it is offered as a way to think rather than a rule to follow. None of the documents read for this page publishes a rank order, so nobody can tell you this is the sector’s position, because it is not. It is what falls out of reading those four documents together.

1. Settle your own evacuation status first, and settle it against the order, not against your judgment of the storm. No published version of the trapping instruction is conditioned on the forecast, and the Bideawee and Best Friends lineage conditions it explicitly on whether you are leaving. Humane World does not write that gate down, so putting it first is this page’s own reasoning rather than a rule all three lineages state. If you are leaving and cannot take the cats with you, that decision comes before any question about which cat.

2. Then apply the capacity gate before the selection, not after. Best Friends’ phrasing is the useful one because it names three separate things: realistically, safely and comfortably, for at least a week. Count carriers, count rooms that can be closed, count days of food and litter you already own, and count the number of separate animals that can be held without contact. That number, not the number of qualifying cats, is your ceiling.

3. Only then choose, and choose the cat the published positions overlap on. Three of the organizations converge on leaving the unsocialized ones: Humane World says leave them, Alley Cat Allies says do not trap and contain them, and Best Friends restricts its own vulnerability rule to friendly cats. Be careful about why. The only reason any of them prints is the one Humane World gives, that the unsocial and feral cats have excellent survival instincts, which is a claim about the cat outdoors and not a claim about what confinement does to it. None of these documents says confinement is hard on an unsocialized cat, so this page is not going to say they do. What the overlap does support is narrow and useful: a friendly cat that is also vulnerable is the one candidate no position in this set names as one to leave, because it clears the socialization criterion, the vulnerability criterion, and Best Friends’ friendliness filter at once, and Alley Cat Allies’ printed objection is specifically to unsocialized and feral cats.

4. Stop when the ceiling is reached, and put the remaining effort into the site. A fifth cat squeezed into a bathroom with two others is not a rescue. The published storm work at the colony, meaning raised and tied-down shelters, food in the back corners, water outside, and a sign with your number on it, is what the sources actually agree on for the cats who stay.

5. Whatever you decide, write down which cats met which published criterion, and which document you were applying. That is the record you will need if someone else has to continue this while you are gone, and it is the difference between a plan and a memory.

The part that connects trapping to the law, which belongs right here

There is a consequence of trapping that none of the five organizations quoted on this page raises, and it does not belong buried in a legal section at the bottom, because the decision it affects is the one you are making in this section.

You do not own these cats. That is the whole premise of a community cat colony, and it is what the trapping instruction quietly asks you to set aside for a week. The Animal Legal and Historical Center’s summary of feral cat legal issues describes an ownership test based on “the extent to which a particular keeper or caretaker has exercised control over a feral cat” and says that in states without a feral cat law, “because caretakers are not owners, they would likely not have the right to prevent other people from relocating feral cat colonies or impounding the feral cats”.

Trapping and holding an animal is control, and control is the thing that test measures.

In at least one state the connection is explicit in statute. Connecticut’s section on municipal control of feral cats defines a keeper as “any person or organization, harboring, regularly feeding or having in his or its possession any feral cat.” and states: “Refusal to permit any animal control officer to impound a feral cat shall be deemed evidence of keeping.” Where a Connecticut municipality has adopted such an ordinance, the statute requires it to make keepers provide for rabies vaccination and sterilization of those cats.

Read the neighbouring section too, because it points the other way. Section 22-332d(a) provides that in a municipality which has adopted an ordinance under subsection (b) of Section 22-339d, an animal control officer “may take into custody any cat found to be damaging property other than property of its owner or keeper or causing an unsanitary, dangerous or unreasonably offensive condition unless such cat can be identified as under the care of its owner or a registered keeper of feral cats.” Inside that narrow custody power, being a registered keeper is what buys the protection the 2009 summary says an unregistered caretaker does not have. The duties still come with it, but they come from Section 22-339d rather than from this one: a registration ordinance adopted under its first subsection must require keepers to provide for the vaccination of those cats against rabies and their sterilization, and Section 22-339d makes such a keeper “an eligible owner for purposes of the animal population control program” established under other sections of the statutes, “provided such cats are adopted from a municipal pound.” Note which subsection each half comes from, because they are separate adoptions rather than a package: the registration that makes someone a keeper comes from the first subsection of Section 22-339d, and the custody power in Section 22-332d(a) comes only where a municipality has adopted an ordinance under the second.

Connecticut is one state and this is one example. It is quoted because it is written down and readable, not because it applies to you. The join is this site’s own, and it is short: the same act that the storm guidance frames as protective is, in some jurisdictions, evidence of a legal relationship with duties attached. Nobody publishing the trapping instruction says so. Find out what your municipality’s animal ordinance says about feral cats and keepers before storm season, not during a warning, and if you are seriously considering trapping and holding cats you do not own, that is a question for a lawyer in your state. The ASPCA’s own position statement on community cats makes the same recommendation about programs generally, stating that “Before engaging in any community cat program, legal counsel should be consulted to ensure that the program’s activities are permitted under applicable state and local law.”

Moving a Shelter Is Not Relocating Cats

A short section, because the vocabulary here is a genuine hazard and it is easy to get wrong in a headline.

In community cat work, relocation is normally a term of art and it normally means moving the cats. Normally is doing real work in that sentence, and the proof is on this page: the Neighborhood Cats storm page, the single richest source quoted here, writes “relocate them to higher ground within the cats’ territory” about the shelters and feeding stations. So even the sources are not uniform, which is exactly why the word has to be checked rather than assumed. Three organizations cited on this page publish a position on relocation as the moving of cats, and all three treat it as a last resort at best: Alley Cat Allies, Best Friends and the ASPCA. Neighborhood Cats, Humane World and Bideawee were not read for this page on that question, and this page is not going to assume their positions from silence. Alley Cat Allies devotes a page to the subject and states: “Relocation of community cats is an absolute last resort and should only be considered if a cat is in imminent danger.” The same page states: “Even if done with proper protocol, relocation can be ineffective and even dangerous for cats.” and adds: “Community cats bond to their outdoor homes and, if relocated, may try to find their way back. In some cases, cats have died in the process.”

Alley Cat Allies’ own colony tracking form prints the definition on the sheet, in its list of outcome terms: “Relocated: Moved from one outdoor setting to another in order to avoid imminent death. To be avoided at all costs/viewed as a last resort.”

Best Friends, as quoted above, states plainly: “Do not attempt to move or relocate healthy community cat groups to get them out of harm’s way in the event of a disaster.” The ASPCA’s position statement adds a lawfulness condition: “Community cat relocation should only be considered as a last resort when the cats involved are at known risk, other community cat management strategies are unavailable, and relocation is permitted under applicable law.”

So: when this page says to move something, it means a shelter, a feeding station, a pallet or a tarp. It never means a cat. If you are reading other storm guidance for colonies and it uses “relocate” without saying what is being relocated, find out which one it means before you act on it, because the two instructions have opposite standing in this field.

The Ground You Do Not Own

This is the one absence claim from the original brief for this page that survived checking, and it is the site’s own observation rather than a finding attributed to anyone.

Read the physical instructions again as a list of things done to a property. Move a structure. Set it on pallets. Tie it to a fence. Hammer stakes into the ground. Post a laminated sign. Store bricks somewhere else. Come back afterwards with tools and bleach to clean up.

Most colonies are not on the caretaker’s land. They are behind a shopping plaza, along an alley, at the back of a warehouse lot, in an apartment complex’s landscaping, under a church shed. Not one of the documents read for this page addresses whether the caretaker has permission to do any of that. Not the two Alley Cat Allies pages, not the Neighborhood Cats storm page or winter page, not Humane World’s page, not Best Friends’ chapter, not Bideawee’s.

The closest any of them comes is oblique, and it appears in Best Friends’ instructions for briefing a stand-in caregiver, where the caretaker is told to “give parking and entry codes or any other instructions that may be needed to access the sites.” An entry code is somebody else’s door. The chapter concedes that the site belongs to a third party without ever saying so, and it never returns to the point.

This page is not going to manufacture a legal rule to fill that. What it will say is what falls out of reading the guidance honestly:

• The physical work in the checklist below is work on property, and property questions are answered by whoever owns the property, not by an animal welfare organization and not by this page.
• If you have a working relationship with the property owner or the site manager, storm season is the time to have a short conversation about what you may do to the shelters, whether you may drive stakes, and how you get in afterwards. That conversation is much easier before a hurricane watch than during one.
• If you do not have that relationship, the low-friction version of every instruction on this page is the one to prefer: things that are moved rather than fixed, weights removed rather than added, ties to a structure that already exists rather than stakes driven into ground.
• Whatever access arrangement you have is also the arrangement your backup caretaker inherits, which is why Best Friends puts entry codes and parking in the handoff document rather than in a footnote.

Getting Back In Afterwards

Two organizations publish a route into a closed area, and both send you to the same office. Neighborhood Cats: “If your colony is located in an area that is closed off because of storm damage, contact your local police precinct and speak to the officer in charge of Community Affairs.” Humane World for Animals says that a caretaker unable to return should “contact the local police precinct to learn what options are available to provide care for the cats, such as gaining temporary access or coordinating with emergency responders.”

Best Friends states the timing rule that comes first: caregivers “must wait for local authorities to lift any travel restrictions to the area where the cats reside and should observe any curfews in place in that area.”

Alley Cat Allies publishes the fallback for when access is not available at all: “After imminent danger has passed, if you are not allowed into the area right away, reach out to local humane groups and inform them of the location of your colony. Ask them to provide water and food until you can return.”

That is the colony-specific part. The general machinery, which is to say what kind of closure you are dealing with, who has the legal authority to hold it, how escorted access and re-entry passes actually work, and where the certified-officer channel fits, is on our page about re-entry access to reach a pet in a closed zone, and it is not repeated here. One thing worth carrying across from this page to that one: a colony caretaker asking for access is asking on behalf of animals nobody has recorded as theirs, which is exactly why the photo record described below matters before the storm rather than after it.

Three notes on what to expect when you do get in, all published, all short.

Give it weeks, not hours. Alley Cat Allies: “Cats can hide for days after severe weather before returning to their colonies.” Humane World for Animals: “Most cats will return within a week, but some may take a few weeks to come back.” Neighborhood Cats: “Most will come back within a week, but some stragglers may take a few weeks to return.”

Look up. Neighborhood Cats: “Also look high – cats may have climbed to escape flood waters and may still be up in trees or on rooftops.” Humane World for Animals makes the same point, noting the cats may have climbed high to escape floodwater or be hiding in or under a building that has not been badly damaged.

Clean what the water touched. Neighborhood Cats: “Thoroughly bleach shelters, feeding stations and dishes if they were exposed to flood waters, which may contain toxins from sewage or other sources of contamination.” Humane World’s version is more cautious about the product: disinfect shelters, feeding stations and dishes exposed to floodwaters, and “Use a nontoxic, cat-safe disinfectant. Check with your veterinarian or animal shelter to see what products are safe.” Those two are not identical instructions, so read both before you pick a product, and note that Humane World is the one telling you to ask a veterinarian which product is safe. Both also say to discard or clean wet bedding and insulation material, because wet straw or newspaper is no longer insulation.

And the one that outranks all of them, in Neighborhood Cats’ own words about arriving at the site: “When you arrive at the colony site after a severe weather event, the first thing to take care of is yourself.” The page then names weakened overhanging branches, falling debris, and downed power lines that can turn puddles into electrical hazards. If a cat is injured, that is a call to a veterinarian, and both Neighborhood Cats and Humane World say to trap injured cats and get them to veterinary care rather than treating them at the site.

Read Humane World’s version whole, because the qualifier is the operative part after a disaster. It publishes both “Trap injured or sick cats as soon as possible and get them medical care” and, in the bullet directly above it, “Consult your veterinarian on how best to treat the cats and determine if they need to be trapped and transported to a clinic. The disaster may have also impacted veterinarians’ capacity to provide services, so make sure any sick or injured outdoor cat can be seen by a veterinarian before trapping.” Those two are in tension and the tension is the point: an injured feral cat sitting in a trap with nowhere to go is worse off than one that has not been trapped yet, and after a hurricane the clinic is one of the things that may be closed. Confirm somewhere will see the cat before you set the trap.

The Record, the Forms That Already Exist, and What They Do Not Cover

Every organization here tells you to keep a written record of the colony with photographs. It is the least glamorous instruction in the set and probably the highest-value one, because it is what turns a vague sense that somebody is unaccounted for into a description a shelter can match against.

Neighborhood Cats puts it first in its whole storm sequence: “Well before any bad weather arrives, the first step is to catalogue your cats.” and “Compile a list, including descriptions and photos, even if you’re already very familiar with the colony.” Humane World for Animals says to create and update a list complete with detailed descriptions and photos of all the cats in the colony. Alley Cat Allies says to have descriptions of the community cats you care for along with photos, and separately, in its supply kit list, names “Photos of companion cats (preferably with you in it to prove ownership) and cats in colonies in case they need to be identified”.

Best Friends publishes the fullest field list:

“Keep a record of the cats you care for and their location. Include information such as the number of cats, descriptions and photos, any visible or known injuries, places where they tend to sleep and eat, and feeding routines by the community. Keep that information updated as it changes. Make copies of the document and be sure to take it with you if you ever have to evacuate.”

And then it adds the step that survives the weather, which is the detail worth carrying out of the whole chapter:

“Secure a copy of the document to any areas where the cats tend to sleep. Include the names and phone numbers of caregivers and place the document in a plastic sleeve for waterproofing.”

Do not build this from scratch, because it already exists and it is free

The single most useful thing this page can tell a caretaker about the colony record is that the general version of it is already published, as a printable, at no cost.

Alley Cat Allies publishes a Community Cat Colony Tracking System, in two formats from the same resource page: a printable PDF and an editable Excel spreadsheet. The form carries a 2017 copyright line. It provides caregiver and additional-caregiver blocks with phone, email and address; a colony block with the colony name, location name, street address, cross street, city, state and ZIP, the year the colony formed and a Setting checklist covering alley, offices, apartment, residential, rear of address, park and industrial; counts of adult males, adult females and kittens and of cats fostered, adopted or remaining; and a numbered per-cat grid whose columns are Name of Cat, Color/Markings, Hair Length, Sex, Age, Date Trapped, Name of Trapper, Surgery, Eartip, Vaccines, Parasites, Microchip Brand, Microchip ID Number, Notes on Outcome, Notes on General Health, and a Labeled Photo Attached column.

Bideawee’s disaster page points caretakers to exactly this form, noting it is available as a printable PDF or an editable Excel spreadsheet.

Alley Cat Allies separately publishes a Cat Identification Worksheet as a PDF, carrying a 2018 copyright line, with an insert-photo slot, fields for eye colour, whisker colour, nose colour and paw-pad colour, a unique identifiers list covering eartip, ear notch, folded ears, polydactyl and Manx, fill-in coat diagrams for face, body and leg markings, and coat colour, length and pattern checklists. Its own framing is worth knowing before you print twenty of them: the worksheet’s opening line is written in owned-cat terms, reading “If your cat goes missing, being able to point out her unique physical characteristics to animal shelter staff or neighbors can be crucial to getting them back home.” Alley Cat Allies nonetheless points colony caretakers at it directly. Its disaster page tells readers to have descriptions and photos of “your own cats and the community cats you care for” and then says its cat identification guide and worksheet can help record those physical characteristics accurately. So the wording on the form is narrower than the use its own publisher recommends, which is worth knowing so you do not conclude, as this page nearly did, that the form is off-scope for a colony.

What those forms do not carry, which is the storm half

Both forms are colony-management and identification instruments. Neither was built for a storm, and there are five things a storm plan needs that neither has a place for. This list is this site’s own, assembled from what the five organizations’ storm guidance asks you to decide and what the two published forms do not record.

1. Which published criterion each cat meets, if any. Friendly or not. Pregnant, kitten, elderly. Young enough to socialize. Write down which document’s criterion you applied, because in a hurry, “vulnerable” and “friendly” stop meaning the same thing to two different people.
2. What each shelter is anchored to, and what was removed. Which fence post, which tree, which structure. And explicitly: whether winter weights were taken off the roofs, and where they went. That is the item a stand-in caretaker cannot see by looking.
3. Where the stations actually are, in a form someone else can follow. Best Friends’ version is the specification worth copying: “Draw a map or pinpoint the stations on a Google satellite or street-view map.” with photos of landmarks such as light poles or groupings of trees nearby.
4. How to get in. Entry codes, gate combinations, parking, and the name of whoever at the property gives permission. Best Friends puts this in the handoff document; neither printable form has a field for it.
5. The date your backup caretaker last walked the route with you. Not their phone number, which every form has, but the date. Best Friends’ instruction is that stand-ins “should learn your routine and go with you a few times before a disaster occurs so the cats can become familiar with them.” and a plan with an untested stand-in is a plan with an untested stand-in no matter how complete the paperwork is.

Add those five to the printed form, in the margin or on the back, and you have the storm version. Print it, put it in a plastic sleeve, and follow Best Friends’ instruction about where the copies go: one at the site where the cats sleep, one on the refrigerator or inside the front door, one with your own evacuation documents, and one with each backup caretaker.

The Handoff, Which Is the Part Most Plans Skip

Four of the five say to have a named backup caretaker. Neighborhood Cats’ storm page is the exception; it does not raise the subject, which is a fact about that document rather than a position. Two of the four put the contact card in the same two places, the wallet and the refrigerator, which is a strong hint that it works.

Alley Cat Allies: “Enlist a back-up caregiver who is responsible for the community cats in your absence and network with other community cat caregivers in your area to set up a buddy system to create a safety net of care for the cats.” and, on the card itself: “Make an emergency contact card for your own cats and community cat colonies in case you are not immediately available. Include all contact information for your substitute caregiver. Carry this card in your wallet and your car, give copies to your backup caregiver, and post it somewhere visible in your home like on the refrigerator.”

Humane World for Animals: “Carry the contact information for your secondary caretaker in your wallet. Also post the information on your refrigerator or some other visible place in your home.” It also says to make sure you have cellphone numbers for other neighbours who feed the cats.

Bideawee argues for a team rather than a person, on the reasoning that a team reduces the load on any one caretaker and keeps the colony covered if something happens to one of them.

Best Friends prints the most complete specification of what the stand-in actually needs, in five parts. Read the attribution carefully before you treat it as a fourth voice. Chapter 28 carries a second footnote, distinct from the NYC Feral Cat Initiative footnote quoted earlier, and it is attached to this section: “The information in this section was adapted from the Alley Cat Allies website.” The URL it names is Alley Cat Allies’ guide for community cat caregivers during COVID-19. So the handoff specification below is Alley Cat Allies’ material restated by Best Friends, not a second organization independently arriving at the same list. The two Alley Cat Allies quotations above come from a different Alley Cat Allies document, its Be Prepared for Disasters page, so on this one question that publisher is being heard twice: once directly, and once through Best Friends. Count the handoff section as three lineages, not four. With that named, here is the specification:

• Exact location of the feeding stations. A drawn map or a pin on a satellite or street-view map, photos of nearby landmarks such as light poles or groups of trees, and “parking and entry codes or any other instructions that may be needed to access the sites.”
• Feeding details. What to feed and how much, instructions on refilling water bowls if that is part of the routine, and the times the cats are normally fed, with the note that if the substitute cannot keep those times, they should at least be consistent with whatever new times they set.
• Cat descriptions. How many cats at each location, with descriptions or photos and names where possible, and “Indicate microchip numbers for each cat if they have them.”
• Contact information for all fill-in caregivers, so that they can reach each other if extra help is needed.
• The name of the clinic, veterinarian or organization that spayed, neutered and vaccinated the cats, plus surplus food handed over in advance if you can manage it.

And the delivery instruction, which is the one people skip: “In addition to emailing it to them, print it out and put it on your refrigerator or inside your front door so that the information can be found easily.”

If your colony is in an apartment complex or a building where the arrangement is really with neighbours rather than with a formal network, our apartment building pet buddy system checklist covers how those agreements are structured. That page is written for owned pets in a building, so treat it as the structure and this page as the colony-specific content that goes into it: a colony handoff carries a site you do not own, an entry code, a station map and a set of animals nobody has legal standing over, and none of those appear in an ordinary neighbour arrangement.

How These Documents Were Read, and One Route That Failed

This page rests on documents that were opened and read on August 19, 2026, and two things about that are worth disclosing rather than hiding, because they affect how much weight to put on parts of it.

The richest single source for this subject is currently unreachable at its own address. Neighborhood Cats’ storm preparation and recovery page, excerpted from the Neighborhood Cats TNR Handbook, is the most detailed physical protocol located for a colony in a storm: it is the source of the pallets, the tie-down instruction, the high-wind caution, the doorway orientation, the food in the back inner corners and the no-water-inside rule. On August 19, 2026 the live URL returned HTTP 500 by two independent routes: an ordinary retrieval with a browser user agent, and a rendered browser session, which displayed the site’s own navigation with the words 500 and Internal Error where the article should be. That is a server error on the publisher’s side, not a block on automated access, and it is not evidence that the content is wrong or withdrawn. The page was therefore read in full from the Internet Archive’s capture of March 12, 2025, and every sentence quoted from it on this page was checked against that capture’s underlying HTML. The sources list links the capture, with its date, rather than the live URL, because a link that does not serve the document being described is worse than no link. Two related observations from the same day, offered as facts about what was retrieved rather than as conclusions: the sitemap served at neighborhoodcats.org listed 28 URLs and this page was not among them, and the Colony Care menu in the site’s own rendered navigation listed winter shelter, freezing water, feeding, keeping cats out of gardens and yards, and relocation, without a storm entry. Whether that reflects a deliberate removal, a reorganization or a fault is not something this page can establish, so it is not asserting one.

One organization’s disaster page really is owner-scoped, and that is a fact about one page. The ASPCA’s Disaster Preparedness page was retrieved in full, including its steps on rescue alert stickers, safe havens, designated caregivers and emergency supplies, and its special-consideration sections for horses, birds, reptiles and small animals. A case-insensitive search of the complete retrieved page for “community cat”, “feral”, “colony” and “stray” returned zero matches. Its designated-caregiver step is about an owned pet. That is worth knowing if the ASPCA is where you would naturally start, and it is not evidence of anything broader. Best Friends’ own resource list describes that page accurately in one line: “The ASPCA’s Disaster Preparedness Tips for pet owners, some of which are applicable to community cats”.

One thing this page went looking for and did not find. A search for state or county emergency management guidance written for community cat colonies, as opposed to guidance from advocacy organizations, returned no such document on August 19, 2026. That is a statement about that search and not a finding that no government agency anywhere publishes one; a county animal services department may well have something that a search does not surface. It is recorded because it explains the shape of this whole page: the only publishers of colony storm guidance located here are advocacy organizations, no agency document we located sits above them to settle the disagreements, and that is exactly why a page comparing them has work to do. If your county animal services publishes something, that is the document that governs your site, and it outranks every organization quoted here.

The Colony Storm Checklist

Two lists. The first is the season, done once, on a quiet afternoon. The second is the event, done when there is a track and a timeline. Nothing in either is a substitute for what your own municipality and property owner tell you.

Before the season

• Build or update the colony record with a photograph of every cat. Do not build the general form from scratch: Alley Cat Allies publishes a free Community Cat Colony Tracking System as a printable PDF and an editable Excel spreadsheet, and a separate Cat Identification Worksheet PDF for per-cat detail.
• Add the five storm fields the published forms do not have: which published criterion each cat meets, what each shelter is anchored to and whether winter weights were removed, a station map or pin with landmark photos, entry codes and parking, and the date your backup last walked the route with you.
• Put the record in a plastic sleeve and distribute the copies. Best Friends says to secure a copy where the cats sleep, and to print it for the refrigerator or the inside of the front door rather than only emailing it.
• Name a backup caretaker, or better, a small team. Give them the record, and walk the route with them at least once while nothing is happening.
• Make the emergency contact card. Alley Cat Allies says to carry it in your wallet and your car, give copies to the backup caregiver, and post it at home. Humane World says the same about the wallet and the refrigerator.
• Find out who owns the ground and who to ask about it. Settle in advance what you may move, tie to, stake into and re-enter, and get the entry code written down.
• Read your municipal animal ordinance for anything about feral cats, keepers or registration, and call your local animal services to ask what they expect of caretakers in a declared emergency. This is a local question with local answers.
• Get the eartipping and the photographs done. Alley Cat Allies’ fact sheet puts neutering, eartipping and a good photograph of each cat first, and says to keep the photos with your own pet documentation so they travel with you if you evacuate.
• Check whether the shelters can be raised on pallets or blocks where they stand, and whether there is anything permanent nearby to tie to. Finding out that there is not is more useful in March than in September.
• Make sure the cats have a second, cat-sized way out of anywhere they shelter. Alley Cat Allies says more than one escape route from beneath a shed or building, with the openings kept cat-size. Best Friends says the same about a secured building. Neighborhood Cats adds elevated perches and a non-ground-level exit inside a shed or garage.
• Stock the colony kit. Bideawee’s list is a first aid kit, the colony records including photos, three to seven days of cat food and dishes, a seven-day supply of bottled water, humane traps, blankets or towels, and heavy gloves.

When a storm is forecast

• Decide your own status first. No published version of the trapping instruction is conditioned on the forecast, and the Bideawee and Best Friends lineage gates it on whether you are evacuating. Humane World does not state that gate; putting it first is this page’s own recommendation. Settle it before anything else.
• Take the winter weights off the shelter roofs and tie the shelters down instead. This is the reversal at the top of this page, and it is this site’s own conclusion from two pages by one publisher rather than an instruction either page prints.
• Clear or secure loose objects in and around the colony. Both Neighborhood Cats and Humane World publish this, and the bricks you just removed are now on that list.
• Move shelters and feeding stations to higher ground if there is any, staying inside the cats’ territory.
• Raise shelters and stations on pallets or cinder blocks, high enough that ground water or snow cannot reach the doorways. None of the storm documents read for this page, from any of the five organizations, publishes a clearance height. Do not use a shelter’s internal build dimensions as a clearance figure.
• Tie shelters and feeding stations to a permanent structure, or wedge them tightly into a secure space.
• Turn the openings away from the surge direction if a surge is forecast, or toward a wall if it is not. Two shelters facing each other, no more than a foot apart, is the published alternative.
• If you tarp, tie the tarp at an angle with the overhang past the shelter door, and stake or tie it to a permanent structure. Only Humane World publishes a method, and none of these organizations publishes a cordage or stake specification.
• Leave extra dry food at the station before the weather arrives. The only published quantity for the station itself is Bideawee’s three to seven day supply, written for a caretaker who has to evacuate. Both Bideawee and Alley Cat Allies publish the same three-to-seven-day range for the kit you carry, which is a different instrument. Best Friends’ caution is that return may take weeks. Weigh the amount and the placement against what a ground station draws as well, which our feeding station and trail camera page works through.
• Put dry food inside the shelters, in the back inner corners as far from the door as possible.
• Do not put water inside the shelters. Leave water outside, and note Humane World’s distinction that several bowls of water matter most when the hazard is fire rather than a storm.
• Post the laminated managed-colony sign with a contact number, and know that it also identifies you as the regular feeder, which in some jurisdictions is part of the definition of a keeper.
• If you are considering trapping anyone, read all four published positions in the section above rather than acting on one, apply your capacity gate before you choose a cat, and ask your local animal services what they expect. Alley Cat Allies publishes the instruction not to trap and contain unsocialized or feral community cats, printed in a section for readers who need to evacuate.
• Take the colony record with you. Best Friends says to make copies and be sure to take it if you have to evacuate.
• Tell your backup caretaker you are going, and confirm they still have the map, the codes and the food.

Afterwards

• Wait for the closure to lift. Best Friends says caregivers must wait for local authorities to lift travel restrictions and should observe curfews. If access is the problem, our re-entry page covers how closures and passes work.
• If you cannot get in, ask local humane groups to feed and water in your place, and tell them exactly where the colony is. That is Alley Cat Allies’ published fallback. Both Neighborhood Cats and Humane World route the access request through the local police precinct.
• Take care of yourself first at the site. Falling branches, debris, sharp objects and downed power lines in standing water are all named hazards in the published guidance.
• Restore the normal feeding routine immediately. Neighborhood Cats and Humane World both publish that as the way to draw cats back.
• Do a head count, and expect it to be wrong at first. A week is the published expectation, with stragglers taking a few weeks.
• Look high as well as low. Cats climb to escape floodwater.
• Check the shelters and stations for damage, discard or clean wet bedding and insulation, and clean anything that floodwater reached. Neighborhood Cats says bleach. Humane World says a nontoxic, cat-safe disinfectant and to ask your veterinarian or animal shelter which products are safe.
• Put out more fresh water than usual, because standing water at the site is probably contaminated.
• Contact shelters, rescue groups and any organizations operating in your area with descriptions and photographs of missing cats, and ask what the procedure is for claiming a cat. Alley Cat Allies, Best Friends and Bideawee all recommend going in person.
• Get injured cats to a veterinarian. Do not treat them at the site. Humane World’s own qualifier goes with this one: make sure a veterinarian can actually see the cat before you trap it, because a disaster may have closed the clinics.

A Note on What This Page Refused to Publish

Three things were left out on purpose, and naming them is more useful than quietly omitting them.

A ground-clearance number. There is not one in any of these documents. The functional test is published and the number is not, so the functional test is what appears here.

A national picture of the law. The Animal Legal and Historical Center’s summary carries a 2009 byline and includes state-by-state counts from that year. Those counts are not reproduced on this page, because a count of which states have laws mentioning feral cats is exactly the sort of figure that goes stale quietly and then gets quoted as current. The durable parts of that summary, meaning the ownership test based on the degree of control exercised and the consequences of not being an owner, are not date-sensitive in the same way, and those are what appear here. One state’s statute is quoted as one readable example, and it was checked against the legislature’s 2026 supplement to confirm it was not among the sections amended in the 2025 sessions.

Anything a veterinarian should be deciding. One of the sources read for this page, the Neighborhood Cats storm page, publishes specific post-storm interventions for colony cats, including a supplement to add to their food and a drug class to ask a veterinarian about. Neither is on this page. The line this site holds is that a sourced veterinary fact and a get-to-a-veterinarian trigger are publishable, and treatment, dosing and home management are not, on a page written for a person standing in a wet alley with no clinical training and every incentive to try something.

The Version You Do in Twenty Minutes

If the storm is close and everything above is more than you have time for, the four highest-value actions, in order:

1. Take the weights off the shelter roofs and tie the shelters down. Free, fast, and it is the one instruction where doing nothing means leaving a hazard you installed yourself.
2. Raise the shelters and the station on whatever you have, and check the doorway height against where the water will be. Pallets and cinder blocks are the published materials.
3. Put dry food in the back corners inside the shelters, extra dry food in the station, water outside, and nothing wet indoors.
4. Photograph every cat you can see and text the photos, the address and the cross street to your backup caretaker. If nothing else on this list gets done, the record is what lets somebody else find these animals, and it is the only item here that still works after you have left.

Everything else on this page is the version you do properly, before there is a track on a map.