Piluco, a community cat who shared Ash’s outdoor home. If passed, Ash’s Law will protect PIluco and cats like him throughout Maryland.
We just made history for cats! Alley Cat Allies helped draft and name the first comprehensive statewide law in the United States to protect Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR). Last week, the law was officially introduced as House Bill 912 in the Maryland House of Delegates by sponsor Delegate Michele Guyton. Today, its Senate companion bill, Senate Bill 750, was introduced by Senator Karen Lewis Young.
We’ve named the bill Ash’s Law, and we invite you to read the story behind its naming—of Ash—below. If passed, it will establish and protect TNR as the law of the land in Maryland. Ash’s Law is unique in that it takes protections a step further, preventing local jurisdictions from passing measures that undercut the bill by prohibiting or restricting TNR efforts.
And to further protect advocates, Ash’s Law amends state criminal law to clarify that returning a cat to her outdoor home through a TNR program is not abandonment. It is, in fact, a reunion.
To say that this is a proud moment is a profound understatement. For decades, Alley Cat Allies has worked extensively in Maryland on behalf of cats to educate and collaborate with advocates, organizations, caregivers, and veterinarians, and to champion humane legislation. Now, with the introduction of Ash’s Law, we give Maryland the chance to stand at the forefront of our nation’s humane movement.
Alley Cat Allies will champion Ash’s Law all the way through the process, and we’ll keep you updated on its movement. Let’s go, Maryland!
The Story Behind Ash’s Law
Ash, a community cat who was ripped from her outdoor home in Maryland and killed in 2016. Ash’s Law is named in her honor and memory.
The story of Ash’s Law is the story of two cats: one whose life was senselessly cut short by deadly policies, and one who was lucky enough to escape them. This law honors them both and will protect community cats throughout Maryland in their names.
Ash, a beloved community cat, lived peacefully in Riverdale, Maryland, with her feline family. In 2016, when she was 4 years old, she gave birth to six kittens. But due to a single call to animal control, the entire little family was rounded up and impounded.
Ash spent her last day confined in a cage at a shelter. Within 24 hours, she and her newborn kittens were killed.
Piluco, her colony member, avoided the same fate out of sheer luck. Instead, he was neutered, vaccinated, eartipped, and returned to his outdoor home through Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR). But Piluco’s TNR was carried out in a vacuum of official humane programs in his county. He is still here today despite lethal, archaic animal control policies that took the lives of so many cats like him, as they did Ash.
In too many communities across the United States, lethal control of cats outdoors remains a reprehensible status quo. While Ash’s story exposes the consequences of cruel policies that treat cats’ lives as disposable, Piluco’s illustrates what is possible when TNR is embraced. As of the creation of Ash’s Law, Piluco is in his golden years at the age of 16, and spends peaceful hours in the same outdoor home he once shared with Ash.
In Ash’s memory, we can give every community cat a chance to live the full life they deserve, as Piluco has. And in enacting Ash’s Law in their honor, Maryland will be a true leader.