Unowned cat welfare and population management: a cross-national analysis of practitioner perspectives in Cyprus, Greece, and Portugal

This study offers one of the first cross-national qualitative analyses of unowned cat population and welfare management, grounded in the frontline experiences of 44 practitioners working across Cyprus, Greece, and Portugal. Existing research often focuses on discrete interventions or public attitudes, overlooking the systemic, institutional, and cultural factors that shape daily practice. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory and a relational lens, we conducted thematic and comparative analyses of semi-structured interviews to examine how practitioners navigate distinct sociopolitical and legal contexts. Findings reveal both shared challenges and country-specific variation. Across contexts, practitioners described persistent overpopulation and cumulative welfare harms—including untreated disease, injury, and chronic stress—exacerbated by unreliable funding, fragmented institutional support, data gaps, limited veterinary access, and weak or inconsistently enforced legal frameworks. In Cyprus, responsibility for population management was described as informally devolved to volunteers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In Greece, practitioners characterized ambitious national legislation as producing “ghost” systems that existed on paper but lacked implementation capacity. In Portugal, emerging coordination was described as tempered by uneven municipal capacity. Management efforts were further shaped by cultural norms, socioeconomic disparities, and widespread semi-ownership practices. Although collaboration among NGOs, veterinarians, municipalities, and caregivers was widely viewed as essential, practitioners emphasized that success depended on trust, clearly defined roles, and sustained institutional backing—conditions that were often unstable. At the operational level, practitioners consistently highlighted that humane population control requires high-intensity, geographically coordinated neutering combined with sustained monitoring and community engagement. Overall, the findings suggest that durable progress requires moving beyond reactive, volunteer-dependent interventions toward integrated governance frameworks that align legal authority with implementation capacity and public support, translating policy intent into consistent, humane, and sustainable outcomes.