Stonecrest, GA Animal Ordinances: Cat Rules (2026)

The program in Sec. 5-25(d) targets cats nobody owns. Once an unowned, free-roaming cat is vaccinated, sterilized, and ear-tipped and enrolled, it is exempt from the chapter's registration, licensing, and stray-animal provisions, is not treated as 'abandoned' when trapped, altered, and returned to where it was found, and, as necessary, may be exempted from other owned-animal provisions of the Code. Sec. 5-1's definition of 'stray animal' specifically carves out community cats, so an unidentified stray cat that has never entered the program remains a stray subject to the ordinary stray-animal rules, while an ear-tipped program cat is not.

The city's impoundment rules connect directly to the program: Sec. 5-19(d) lets an eligible stray cat without traceable identification be transferred straight into the community cat program upon impoundment, and Sec. 5-19(e) sharply limits when a healthy community cat can be impounded at all, restricting it to cases where the cat damages someone's personal or private property or creates unsanitary conditions or offensive, objectionable odors. A healthy community cat impounded on either of those grounds under Sec. 5-19(e) is transferred to a qualified adoption facilitator or otherwise disposed of by the city or its designated animal control officers, rather than returned to the field. Enforcement of the surrounding chapter runs through the Police Chief and DeKalb County Animal Control under Sec. 5-19(a).