Lafayette, LA Animal Ordinances: Cat Rules (2026)

Section 10-120(a) has the Lafayette Parish Council formally adopt the community cat diversion program, and § 10-120(b) directs the animal care center and any contracted shelter organizations to treat trap-neuter-return as the preferred outcome for community cats, routing impounded, non-eartipped, free-roaming cats into that process rather than standard impoundment. Under § 10-120(c), every community cat processed this way must be sterilized, ear tipped and rabies-vaccinated, and § 10-120(d) allows the cat to then be managed by a community cat caregiver rather than a traditional owner.

The payoff for caregivers is in § 10-120(e): once the sterilization and ear-tip conditions are met, the cat is exempted from licensing, stray, at-large and other provisions of Chapter 10 that otherwise apply to owned animals -- though it is never exempted from the chapter's nuisance provisions. Section 10-120(g) limits trapping of free-roaming cats to the trap-neuter-return purpose unless the cat is injured or needs veterinary care, and § 10-120(h) requires an ear-tipped cat received at the shelter to be returned to where it was trapped with no hold period.

Section 10-120(i)-(j) shields the animal care center, the City of Lafayette, the Parish of Lafayette and the Lafayette City-Parish Consolidated Government from liability for damage caused by sterilizing, ear-tipping, vaccinating or releasing a cat reasonably believed to be feral or a community cat. Separately, § 10-121(c) states plainly that all cats may be at large, and the article's running-at-large definition in § 10-71 expressly excepts cats from the at-large and stray restrictions that bind dogs, making Lafayette's cat regime centered on TNR diversion rather than confinement or licensing enforcement.