Port Orange, FL Animal Ordinances: Cat Rules (2026)

Section 10-22 lets the animal control authority establish and run a citywide community cat program, with an application process open to anyone who wants to register as a caregiver. Once registered, all colony management activities must be confined to the caregiver's own private property, or to another person's property with prior written authorization, and those activities include feeding and watering feral cats, trapping them, and returning sterilized cats to the established colony. Caregivers are required to actively trap feral cats in their managed colony and have each one sterilized, vaccinated against rabies, and ear-tipped, meaning at least one-quarter inch removed from the left ear, so the cat can be identified as already processed.

Ongoing care obligations do not stop at sterilization: caregivers must keep providing food, water, and medical care on a regular basis, and if a cat needs medical care the caregiver cannot afford or access, the caregiver must not let the cat suffer and instead must deliver it to the local humane society. The animal control authority retains the power to immediately seize and remove all or part of a colony if there is a public health or safety concern such as rabies or another zoonotic disease flagged by the county health department, if the caregiver is not complying with the program rules, or if the cats are creating a nuisance as defined in Section 10-3.

A caregiver who does not comply with the program can simply be removed from participation, which strips the legal cover the program provides and puts any remaining outdoor feeding of those cats back under the general restrictions of Section 10-21.