Ankeny, IA Animal Ordinances: Cat Rules (2026)

Section 55.17 creates Ankeny's community cats initiative to manage the feral cat population through trap-neuter-return (TNR) rather than blanket removal. A property owner carrying out trapping allowed under section 41.12(3) must promptly get any trapped community cat to a veterinarian for sterilization, vaccination and ear-notching for identification, paying the veterinary cost themselves, and then return the cat to the location where it was captured, unless the cat is sick, injured, requested off the property by the owner, judged adoptable, or unless the Police Chief or a designee has declared it a nuisance.

Community caregivers who continue feeding a colony must also make reasonable efforts to keep the cats' vaccinations current under a veterinarian's direction. The section grants community cats specific carve-outs from the rest of Chapter 55: they are exempt from the City's leash requirements and from the general at-large prohibition. The tradeoff is a hard 200-foot buffer: no feeding station for a community cat colony may be placed on City-owned property or within two hundred feet of a playground or school district property. If a community cat becomes a nuisance as the Police Chief or designee determines, meaning it violates any section of the chapter with no community-cat exception, or otherwise threatens health, safety or another animal, it is pulled from the TNR program and captured, and the City disclaims any liability for what happens to it afterward.