Berkeley, CA Animal Ordinances: Cat Rules (2026)

088 starts from a blunt premise: feral cats, defined as undomesticated or wild cats or cats that have reverted to a wild state, are a public nuisance, and feeding or sheltering them is itself a violation unless the caretaker meets a specific compliance path. To avoid citation, the person must be working with an animal agency or group registered with the animal shelter, or with a licensed veterinarian, to spay or neuter the colony's cats; must make sterilization documentation available to Animal Services staff every two weeks starting from when the feeding or sheltering began; and must reach 90 percent of the colony sterilized within three months and 100 percent within five months.

Missing any one of those four conditions, no registered partner, no biweekly documentation, or missing either sterilization benchmark, exposes the caretaker to a citation under the section. 24 or other law, including seizure. The section separately preserves a private party's right to sue or seek an injunction against someone feeding feral cats if that feeding affects them, so City abatement is not the exclusive remedy. 034, which requires a license fee for any unaltered pet cat over six months old that is not part of a registered feral colony, with exceptions for cats a veterinarian certifies cannot safely be altered, temporary visitors' cats, and show cats.