By Stephen Appezzato
HIGHLANDS – Borough officials and members of the Monmouth County SPCA’s (MCSPCA) Animal Control division held a town hall meeting this week about Highlands’ Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) program. The information session came on the heels of the widely followed saga of Ron, a cat stuck in a sewer drain in the borough for 12 days last month. He eventually escaped.
Highlands Mayor Carolyn Broullon opened the meeting, acknowledging it was the first in-person TNR session in several years. When the borough’s TNR program was rebooted in 2016, Highlands held annual meetings, but “COVID put these meetings off and the town opted to release annual reports instead.”
The TNR initiative aim to humanely control the borough’s feral cat population. Feral cats are trapped, spayed or neutered and returned to live in colonies managed by volunteers. According to the advocacy group Alley Cat Allies, feral cats are outdoor cats that are not socialized to humans.
According to the borough’s website, kittens and “friendly” feral cats are put up for adoption through the MCSPCA, reducing the community’s feral numbers.
According to Broullon, 405 cats have gone through the program, with 148 finding permanent homes; “37% of them have been adopted,” she said, while 5% were euthanized. Roughly 60% of the cats have been released bacto managed colonies.
To participate in the program, residents who wish to serve as colony caregivers must complete a registration form and a colony log form, both of which are available on the borough website and must be submitted to the borough offices. Once an application is approved by the town and the MCSPCA, residents can care for community cats.
“There’s specific things that you need to be mindful of if you’re going to be a caregiver,” Broullon said, like rules about feeding hours and approved locations. If caregivers are not trapping on their own property, they must have written permission by the property owner where the cats are located.
“We want this program to curtail this wild cat population by humanely making sure these cats are healthy, getting them spayed or neutered, giving them a safe place to be but not to be
to overrun communities, because that’s not what this program is about. It’s about being safe and being not a detriment to the neighborhood,” Broullon said.
Each year, the borough conducts a census of stray cats and shares that data with the MCSPCA to confirm if “cats are moving from colony to colony, if they’re staying in place where they are, and if they are indeed neutered, if they’ve had their rabies shot,” the Broullon said.
Through the program, some colony caretakers have achieved great success. Some colonies have decreased or disappeared because “their cat population has gone down so much and they’ve been able to adopt and they’ve spayed and neutered all of their cats, so now they have zero in their colony, which is commendable,” Broullon said. “That’s what the program is about – it’s not about hoarding animals, it’s about keeping them safe, spaying and neutering them, getting them to homes and managing, so that it’s not a detriment to the community.”
Broullon reminded attendees that feed- ing cat colonies is not allowed on borough property.
“We want to have healthy colonies, we want to have healthy cats, there are parameters in which this can happen,” she said.
The mayor also addressed the recent situation involving a now well-known feral cat, Ron, which captured the community’s attention when Ron entered a sewer grate and remained stuck in the drain system for approximately two weeks.
While Ron was stuck in the sewer system, many following the saga expressed concern and disappointment online about the borough’s and the MCSPCA’s rescue efforts.
“It could have been handled Day One,” but it went on for 12 days, said Jennifer Panton, who has been a cat colony manager in Highlands for nine years. Ron is a part of one of Panton’s colonies and has been under her care for years.
Ron was missing for three days when Panton heard him “screaming” from a storm drain, she said. Panton said she initially contacted the Department of Public Works and they removed the drain cover for her to set and monitor a trap for Ron. But she said she was eventually directed to remove the trap and work with the police and the MCSPCA to follow their protocols to rescue Ron. After days of back and forth, Ron managed to escape the drain on his own after 12 days. He is now back with his colony, Panton said.
According to the Jersey Coast Emergency News Facebook page, Ron escaped the sewer after State Assembly candidate for District 13, Rich Castaldo, and the page owner removed the storm drain cover with a crowbar. Castaldo then climbed down into the sewer to look for Ron, who bolted out of the open drain.
Broullon said allegations online that the borough was not using money and resources to try to free Ron were false.
More information on the TNR program guidelines and rules can be found on the borough website, and residents in need of TNR services can contact the MCSPCA’s Animal Control team at tnr@monmouthcountyspca.org.
The article originally appeared in the June 5 – 11, 2025 print edition of The Two River Times.
