The following story is featured in the Alley Cat Action® 2026 Winter Newsletter. Read the full newsletter edition here.
In 2025, Alley Cat Allies drafted and named the first comprehensive statewide law to protect Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR). And we led sponsors to champion the legislation alongside us.
We’ve called it The Ash Law. If it passes in Maryland this year, it will create a historic precedent in protecting community cats across the country.
The Ash Law takes protections for TNR further than any other state legislation. It not only establishes TNR as the law of the land, but it also prevents Maryland jurisdictions from prohibiting or restricting TNR efforts through local laws. No other state-level laws take that crucial step.
Alley Cat Allies is hard at work to bring The Ash Law to the finish line. Let’s make history, Maryland!
The Story Behind The Ash Law
Ash, a 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 impounded.
Ash spent her last day 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 TNR. But Piluco’s TNR was carried out in a vacuum of official humane programs in his county. He is still here today (and a golden 16 years old) DESPITE a lethal policy that took the lives of so many cats like him—like Ash.
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.
In their honor, Alley Cat Allies drafted, named, and championed The Ash Law, to ensure that every community cat has a chance to live the full life he or she deserves.