Catnip Nation - A Documentary About Feral Cats and the People Who Take Care of Them

Cat Camp NYC, which took place this past March in Manhattan, turned out to be a very educational experience for me.  I was able to speak to people from all walks of the cat community, learning about their missions, values, and work. One of the people I had the pleasure of meeting was Tina Traster, the Producer and Director of the documentary film, Catnip Nation. 

When I was looking at the promotional materials for the film, I noticed they are located in Rockland County, NY where I was born and raised. This piqued my interest and made me very happy because many people don’t even know that Rockland County is on the map! I was so pleased to hear that a spotlight is being shone on the wonderful people whose tireless efforts improve the lives of homeless cats in my hometown. 

The film’s trailer brings me to tears. 





Catnip Nation has a campaign running on Seed & Spark to help fund the project. The production team has about a dozen shoots left before they move onto editing and post production. Here’s another video about the project. You’ll notice a very famous cat, Lil Bub, and her dad, Mike Bridavsky, supporting the film. (I got teary-eyed watching this as well.) 





There are several incentives you can choose to go along with your donation, ranging from a shout out on the Catnip Nation Facebook page to producer credits. Let’s help the Catnip Nation team reduce feline homelessness by making it easier and legal for colony caretakers help these cats!

Tina has written a guest post for my blog about Catnip Nation, and will be contributing a monthly update on the film’s progress. Please visit again to read more about this fantastic project. 
Dawn

Catnip Nation: The Documentary

Every day, no matter the weather, no matter what, Stony Point resident Andrea LeResche climbs into a tangled copse to feed a colony of cats. And Drazen Cackovic, a Nyack architect, steals time away from his blue prints, to care for a group of felines he keeps in his office. Meanwhile, Ken Salerno, a one-man cat whisperer, makes frequent visits to a New Jersey sanctuary, where he has relocated more than 60 beach cats who would have been rounded up from under the boardwalk in Seaside Heights and taken to shelters, or killed.

These are just some of the characters we meet in Catnip Nation, a full-length documentary that looks deep into the soul of a handful of unsung and unseen heroes who feed and care for feral cats. In some cases, the best-case scenario is for feral "colonies" to be fed, but also to be TNRed -- which means Trap Neuter Returned. Over time, a colony fades out, which is the goal: stopping the endless cycles of kitten births. TNR has been shown to be the proven way to deal with large populations of homeless cats. Nevertheless, it takes "a village" to condone and enable TNR. What our "characters" know all too well is that despite their best intentions, they are constantly dealing with adversity: angry neighbors, misguided animal control officers, apathetic or mercurial politicians, and development pressures. As we get to know our characters throughout the documentary, it becomes clear as to what makes them tick. Why they do what they do, and how they sustain themselves through such diversity.

The ASPCA estimates there are some 90 million cats living on the streets, in every community, nationwide. Some cities have adopted favorable TNR policies, but too many don't. Additionally, TNR only works if there is a collaboration of cooperation among colony caretakers, veterinarians, communities, public officials, etc. It really does take a village to endorse and enforce good rules for cat colony management. The alternative is bleak. Feral cats, by and large, remain unadoptable. When animal control officers round up cats and take them to shelters, that's the end of the line. These cats will get put down. Euthanizing healthy animals is inhumane, even if many see them as nuisances. Also, many times angry neighbors take matters into their own hands, poisoning or harming cats. This is illegal, yet it happens all the time. Education on TNR can slow down this injustice.

TNR-friendly communities have learned ways to mitigate the needs of everyone, feral cats included. Not everyone is cat-sympathetic -- although you'd never know it considering the cat-love we see everyday on the Internet and in popular culture at large. TNR is hard work, and we need to celebrate those who undertake this burden, often at their own expense, and their own peril. In a humane society, we take care of animals. We are hoping Catnip Nation will change hearts and minds on this subject. We're hoping cat lovers will help ignite a grassroots movement demanding a humane solution for feline homelessness. We need the conversation to be brought into the open; it needs to be aired, understood and addressed. 

Tina Traster is a socially-conscious, award-winning journalist, author, and filmmaker. Her 30-minute documentary, This House Matters, is an examination on historic preservation in the Hudson Valley. The film has screened at the YoFi Film Festival, the Kingston Film Festival, the Hoboken International Film Festival, and the Nyack Film Festival. Traster's work has appeared in scores of newspapers, magazines and literary journals including The New York Times, The New York Post, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, The Atlantic, Redbook, Family Circle, Parade, Time Out New York, Audubon, Ski Magazine and many others. She is the author of the award-winning memoir Rescuing Julia Twice: A Mother's Tale of Russian Adoption and Overcoming Reactive Attachment Disorder. Since 2006, Traster has written the "Burb Appeal"column for The New York Post.