Program hopes to reduce the number of cats killed by local shelters
It’s not going to be a quick fix, but a new, multiagency Community Cats program launched earlier this month by Sonoma County Animal Care and Control, Forgotten Felines of Sonoma County, and Sonoma Humane Society has the potential over time to reduce the feral cat population, as well as the number of felines housed – and often euthanized – in shelters.
“In the past, shelters have euthanized healthy cats to make room for new cat intakes,” said Sonoma County Animal Care and Control Director Brigid Wasson. “That model is costly, inhumane, and ineffective at addressing cat over-population. Adoptions help, but can’t keep up with shelter intakes. Community Cats offers long-term solutions that save lives,” she said.
Community Cats is a multifaceted program that requires people in the community to get involved.
A trap/neuter/return (TNR) approach to addressing feral cat overpopulation is a central part of Community Cats, but there is also an educational component to it.
“The first part of this program is about educating our community on responsible animal care,” Wasson said. “Many of the people who bring us unwanted cats are what we would consider the owner or the guardian, because the animals live on their property and they feed them every day. So our goal is to educate them on proper care. If you are going to feed animals you need to do so responsibly,” she said, noting, for example, people should only feed the feral cats what they will eat during the day and not leave excess food out that will attract raccoons and other wild animals that may become a nuisance. Wasson said it’s also important for people take advantage of available resources for affordable spay and neuter, such as Animal Care and Control’s Love Me Fix Me program.
If the Community Cats program is successful, “we believe that intake will be reduced, because the community will now have a different expectation, that this is now not a free drop off place for unwanted animals,” Wasson said. Also, as more feral cats are sterilized the number of kittens born should decrease, thus reducing the intake at the shelter, she said.
“If shelters don’t limit intake they quickly become overcrowded, euthanasia goes up, because there are more cats that aren’t adoptable – and even cats that were adoptable get sick, and their behavior deteriorates from stress. So the answer is for the shelters to do intake more responsibly and that means having positive outcome plans in place for every cat that comes in the door, because you can’t just take them all in and hope for the best,” Wasson said.
“Sonoma County should be a kitten free zone because of all the available resources right here in our county,” said Forgotten Felines Executive Director Jennifer Kirchner.
“The resources are here. We are spaying and neutering every week. We will spay and neuter over 3,000 cats this year, just at Forgotten Felines,” she said.
“So again, the most important part is the education piece. People just have to pick up the phone and ask for help. We ask for $30 co-pay, per cat, or whatever the client can afford. Even if they can only afford $1, that is what we will take, and if they can’t trap the cats themselves, we will come out and help them trap the cats,” she said.
“If these cats are healthy chances are they have a caretaker or are surviving quite nicely without any human intervention,” Kirchner said. “But spaying and neutering is essential because just one un-spayed female cat and her offspring can produce an untold number of kittens.”
According to a multiplication chart at Forgotten Felines, two uncontrolled breeding cats create the following: two litters a year at a survival rate of 2.8 kittens per litter. With continued breeding: Year 1 = 12 cats; Year 2 = 66 cats; Year 3 = 2,201 cats; Year 4 = 3,822 cats; Year 5 = 12,680 cats; and by Year 10 that number reaches a staggering 80,399,780 cats.
Unlike dogs, many cats live outside; they are more independent than canines and better able to provide for themselves resulting in a lot of free roaming, unaltered cats, Wasson said. Because of that, the population in the shelters really spikes during the spring and summer, during kitten season.
“The reason is twofold; it’s not just the kittens people are bringing in, it’s the adults,” she said, noting, the cats may go unnoticed the rest of the year, but when they are mating they exhibit annoying behaviors. “The male cats are fighting and yowling … you’ve seen the old cartons where people are throwing a shoe out the window at the singing Tomcat … they are spraying on people’s property, etc.,” she said.
“There are people that don’t like cats, there are people that don’t like birds, or deer eating out of their garden, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t work together to control the situation humanely. Feral cats have been perfectly happy living amongst us for 10,000 years; this is nothing new, it has just become more under the radar of public,” Kirchner said.
“There are some people that oppose free roaming feral cats for a variety of reasons, such as going after birds, using their garden as a litter box, or spraying, yowling, etc., but our focus is to spay/neuter because that is the only way to control the population growth short of killing, which studies have proven doesn’t help at all. … This is the wave of the future. Other communities throughout the United States have adapted to this trap/neuter/return policy, because just killing cats isn’t the answer,” she said.
However promising the program may sound to some, Wasson feels there is some misunderstanding surrounding Community Cats.
“I think people believe the (feral cats) are wild animals and out there surviving on hunting, but that is not true. In reality they are living in people’s backyards, living on cat food. Also, I think people might think we are taking these cats and putting them some place they weren’t already, when in fact all we are doing is spaying and neutering cats that are currently at that location,” she said.
Volunteers are needed at all three animal welfare agencies to support the Community Cats program. To help, or for more information call Forgotten Felines at 576-7999; Sonoma County Animal Care and Control at 565-7100; or the Sonoma Humane Society at 542-0882. (Only Forgotten Felines loans out cat traps.)
