This is our chance to make HISTORY for cats! Alley Cat Allies drafted, named, and is championing Ash’s Law—the first-ever comprehensive statewide law protecting Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) and community cats.
The Maryland House Environment & Transportation Committee will consider Ash’s Law, or HB 912, on Wednesday, February 25. And on March 10, it will be considered in the Maryland Senate.
If passed, Ash’s Law would officially establish and protect TNR as the law of the land in Maryland. Ash’s Law is unique in that it goes a step further than any other law, preventing local jurisdictions from prohibiting or restricting the TNR efforts of organizations and residents.
We named Ash’s Law in honor of Ash, a beloved community cat from Riverdale, Maryland, who was removed from her outdoor home in 2016 and impounded in an animal shelter. She spent her final day confined in a cage with her six young kittens. All were killed less than 24 hours later.
Ash’s story exposes the consequences of lethal policies that treat cats’ lives as disposable—policies that Ash’s Law seeks to end by establishing an official statewide TNR program.
Let’s do this for Ash, for all community cats in Maryland, and to set a humane standard for the entire nation! We deeply appreciate Delegate Michele Guyton and Senator Karen Lewis Young for sponsoring Ash’s Law and thank all who are collaborating with us to see TNR become the law of the land in Maryland.
If you live in Maryland, tell the House Environment & Transportation Committee that you support Ash’s Law to protect TNR and community cats! If you do not, share the action with everyone you know in Maryland.
The Story Behind Ash’s Law
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.