Christine Hinrichs is a trapper, of sorts. She camps out in dark alleys for hours trying to capture wild animals.
"The best feeling is hearing the crash of the trap door," she said. "That means we've caught a cat."
She doesn't do it because she hates cats. Quite the opposite: Hinrichs, a volunteer for Pet Project Rescue, started a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program, which is considered a humane way to reduce the number of feral cats living in neighborhood colonies.
She takes the cats she captures to a veterinary clinic, where they are spayed or neutered and treated for any health problems. After they recover, she releases them in the area they came from.
TNR isn't very well known in the pet rescue community because it doesn't end with a heartwarming story about a stray cat finding a home, said Hinrichs, who launched and implements the cat neutering program for local Pet Project Rescue (PPR).
"But to address animal overpopulation and homelessness at the source, we have to prevent feral cats from having litters of kittens on the streets," she said.
Hinrichs learned about Pet Project Rescue (petprojectrescue.com) in 2010, when she adopted her cat Drizzle from the organization. Before long, she was volunteering to take rescued pets to local adoption events.
When she bought her St. Paul home, she started fostering dogs, cats and litters of kittens.
