Episode
Ep 665: From One to Many: Building a Neighborhood-Based Community Cat Program with Tonya Cook, Community Cat Program Manager at Ohio Alleycat Resource
- Podcast
- The Community Cats Podcast
- Published
- May 19, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1454
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://communitycatscentral.com/episode-665-tanya-cook/
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Summary
"When we look at things on a neighborhood level and we're noticing patterns, noticing new colonies — when something's predictable, it's preventable." This episode is sponsored-in-part by Maddie's Fund , OcuTrap , and The Kitten Conference . What does it look like to build a community cat program from scratch — not just logistically, but with real intention about how change happens in a neighborhood? In this episode, Stacy LeBaron speaks with Tonya Cook, Community Cat Program Manager at Ohio Alleycat Resource (OAR) in Cincinnati, about her remarkable journey from neonatal kitten foster to full-time community cat advocate, and what she's learned about scaling impact when you're a team of one. Tonya's path into animal welfare began in 2020 when she started fostering neonatal kittens with Cincinnati Animal CARE. Night feedings and fragile lives gave her a front-row seat to how many kittens were being born outside — and how few resources existed to stop the cycle at the source. That question drove her toward TNR and, ultimately, toward a complete career change. In 2022, she left behind 15 years as a professional photographer to pursue animal welfare full-time, gaining hands-on experience at UCAN and Cincinnati Animal CARE before joining OAR in 2025 to build its community cat program from the ground up. In its pilot year, that program has facilitated the TNR of over 400 cats — most of them trapped by Tonya herself, two days a week, before she recognized the limits of that approach. When burnout began to set in, she did something harder than trapping: she stepped back. That decision led to the creation of OAR's Neighborhood Cat Ambassador Program, which embeds trained volunteers directly into high-need zip codes identified through shelter and rescue data. Ambassadors walk the…