Effingham County, GA Animal Ordinances: Cat Rules (2026)

Sec. 10-71(a) makes it unlawful for a cat's owner or keeper to let it run at large in the county, stray from the owner's premises, or go onto another person's property; a loose cat can be picked up by humane enforcement and impounded under Sec. 10-73 for a minimum of three working days before adoption or euthanasia. Sec. 10-118, adopted with the rest of the rewritten animal chapter on Nov. 18, 2025, carves out a separate track for unowned "community cats." The section defines a community cat as a free-roaming cat that may be cared for by area residents, whether known or unknown, and may or may not be feral, and defines a "community cat caregiver" as someone who feeds, shelters, or gives medical care to such a cat without being its legal owner, keeper, or harborer.

Ear tipping, the removal of the distal quarter-inch of a community cat's left ear under anesthesia by a licensed veterinarian, marks a cat as sterilized and vaccinated against rabies. Under Sec. 10-118(c), trapping is permitted solely to sterilize, vaccinate, and ear-tip community cats, and an ear-tipped cat brought to a local shelter is returned to where it was trapped unless it needs veterinary care. Community cat caregivers may reclaim an impounded community cat without proving ownership, solely to carry out trap-neuter-return or to return an ear-tipped cat to its territory, and returning a cat this way is not treated as abandonment. Trap-neuter-return is the preferred disposition for any impounded community cat while shelter funding allows it.