Court case hinges on the difference between a truly feral cat and a tame, friendly cat found at large
SAN DIEGO, California—A lawsuit brought against the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA by the Southern California animal rescue charities Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors seeks to establish, for the first time, a clear legal distinction between the neuter/return and return-to-field approaches to cat population control.
The San Diego Humane Society & SPCA resumed providing shelter service for the San Diego city and county animal control agencies in 2018, after a 43-year hiatus beginning in 1975.
Almost immediately the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA announced that it would pursue a neuter/return policy in response to calls about feral cats, a term usually meaning hostile cats who cannot be handled easily and appear to have lived outdoors, independent of human help, all of their lives.
Feral cats were, and are, to be sterilized, vaccinated, and released where they were found, to live out the balance of their natural lives as the self-sufficient wild animals they had apparently always been.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Return-to-field added
Two years later, in 2020, the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA expanded the feral cat program into a “Community Cats” program, along lines that society president Gary Weitzman told KPBS-TV investigative reporter Claire Trageser are recommended by “Alley Cat Allies, American Pets Alive, the ASPCA, Best Friends and the Humane Society of the United States.”
The “Community Cats” program differs from a neuter/return program in adding the practice of return-to-field.
Return-to-field means that any tame cats picked up by animal control, or brought to shelters by individuals, who are not identified by microchip, and therefore cannot be taken directly home, are sterilized and vaccinated if necessary, then released where captured, to either find their own way back home or try to survive as ferals.
Return-to-field as a method of reducing animal shelter intakes and killing in some ways resembles the practice of dumping cats to “give them a chance,” as practiced by many people instead of taking cats to shelters during most of the 20th century, when shelter killing rates for cats often ran upward of 95%.
Cat stalks sandhill crane from the safe side of a window. (Beth Clifton photo)
Birder concerns
Return-to-field accommodates the behavior of people who keep cats as outdoor pets, or otherwise let them roam.
But return-to-field does not respond to the concerns of people, especially birders, who prefer not to have free-roaming cats in their yards and neighborhoods, and are typically much more concerned about hunting by the wandering pet cats they see in daylight than by the mostly nocturnal feral cats they seldom see and may not know exist.
The principal behavioral difference between a feral cat and a fed, socialized pet cat outdoors is that the feral cat mostly sleeps by day, and efficiently hunts rodents for a living by night, when few healthy birds are on the ground or otherwise accessible.
The fed, socialized cat tends to hunt by day, when most rodents are in hiding but most birds are out and about. Having no need of calories from hunting, the fed, socialized cat often hunts birds for sport, typically with a low rate of success relative to time and energy expended.
That cat often goes home at night to sleep indoors.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Plaintiffs & defendants
The typical differences between authentic feral and roaming pet cat behavior underlie the essential differences between neuter/return and return-to-field programs, one of which is that neuter/return work is of necessity usually done at night, by volunteers usually operating with their own funds and contributions from a small circle of donors, while return-to-field work can be done by animal control personnel during normal business hours.
These program differences are, indirectly, the focus of the lawsuit against the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA, filed in February 2021 by San Diego lawyers Bryan W. Pease and Pamela Harris, of San Diego, and Beverly Hills lawyer David Tenenbaum.
Co-plaintiffs, in addition to the Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors, include private citizens Terrence Higgins and B.J. Withall.
Also named as a defendant is San Diego Humane Society & SPCA president Gary Weitzman. The real target of the lawsuit, however, is the return-to-field approach itself, as advocated by Alley Cat Allies, American Pets Alive, the ASPCA, Best Friends and the Humane Society of the United States.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Unlawful business practice”
The longterm goal appears to be to oblige the retraction or amendment of return-to-field practices to prevent cats from being released who have little or no chance of survival as feral, and not all that much chance of returning to a home, amid a variety of hazards and possibly having been dumped, rather than just becoming lost after running away.
Opens the lawsuit by the Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors, et al, “San Diego Humane Society & SPCA is engaged in the unlawful business practice of abandoning social, adoptable, domestic cats onto the streets.”
The lawsuit argues that the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA “is obligated as stated in California Civil Code 1815(c) and 1816(c) to receive and hold for the required holding period all stray cats brought to them by the public, but is instead advising citizens to leave stray cats where they are.”
The San Diego Humane Society & SPCA “seems to use the terms ‘Return to Field,’ ‘Return to Habitat,’ ‘Shelter/Neuter/Return,’ and ‘Wild at Heart’ interchangeably,” the lawsuit continues. “One of the differences between these programs and the traditional ‘Trap/Neuter/Return’ (TNR) is that these new programs include any and all stray cats that are brought into the shelter even if they are friendly, domesticated cats who would qualify for the adoption program.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“TNR is for feral cats”
“The traditional ‘Trap/Neuter/Return’ model is for feral cats who are unsocialized and who would not be able to become a pet, the lawsuit emphasizes.
“Switching around of these titles and their similarity to the term ‘Trap/Neuter/Return’ is intentional,” the lawsuit alleges, “in order to confuse the public. Defendants/respondents are releasing friendly adoptable cats in the same way they would release a feral cat, and that is not only against the law, but not in the best interest of a social, adoptable cat.”
According to the lawsuit, “Plaintiffs obtained 75 individual records of cats whose outcome was ‘Return to Habitat’ between July and December 2019. Approximately 30% of those cats had been brought to the shelter in an ordinary pet carrier and/or had behavior notes indicating that they were friendly and able to be handled and petted.”
The San Diego Humane Society & SPCA return-to-field program “has been going on since at least the spring of 2019,” the lawsuit charges, “with perhaps the exception of a pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Illegal to abandon”
“It is illegal in California to purposefully abandon an animal,” the lawsuit continues. “It is also illegal to leave an animal in any building, enclosure, lane, street, square, or lot of any city, county, city and county, or judicial district without proper care and attention.
“Defendants/respondents claim that because the friendly, domestic cats whom they dump back onto the street are healthy and look well cared for on the day that they are brought in, the cats are therefore ‘thriving’ living on their own and should return to where they were found.
“This claim is an attempt to deny any responsibility,” the lawsuit alleges, “that defendants/respondents have to abandoned and homeless animals who are brought to them.”
This, the lawsuit charges, amounts to the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA “denying their primary duty to animals they are supposed to be protecting. Just because a cat looks healthy on the day he or she was brought in does not mean that he or she will not be attacked by a predator or hit by a car the next day, or starve in a month because no one is caring for the cat because the cat has been abandoned.”
(Beth Clifton photo)
Feral cats run & hide; pet cats run to their bowl
Perhaps even more of relevance, but not mentioned in the lawsuit, is that neighbors annoyed by the presence of a wandering pet cat may trap and surrender the cat to the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA once––and then shoot or poison the cat, should the cat reappear, for instance trying to ambush birds at a backyard feeder.
The cat may be healthy and look well cared for, yet that scarcely means the cat is not in jeopardy, especially if the cat is not returned directly to a home where a person self-identified as responsible for the cat can be told what has happened, and be warned against letting the cat roam in the future.
Another behavioral difference of relevance between genuinely feral cats and tame pet cats is that upon release, the genuinely feral cat will run to a hiding place; the tame pet cat will often run to a bowl, indoors or out, and/or meow at a door or window for attention.
“Genuine ‘Trap/Neuter/Release’ (TNR) programs should be continued and enhanced in order to curb feral cat population,” the lawsuit by the Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors, et al, argues. “Such programs should include the presence of a colony caregiver who feeds and monitors the feral cats. This is not the same thing as what Defendants/respondents are doing, which is dumping friendly, adoptable cats on the streets.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“The Proposed Project Does Not Encourage Feeding”
Note that the Citywide Cat Program approved by the Los Angeles City Council on December 10, 2020, operating just two hour’s drive north, specifically states that, “The Proposed Project Does Not Encourage Feeding.”
Nor does ANIMALS 24-7 encourage feeding, since the most authentic difference between a feral cat and a pet cat is that the feral cat hunts for a living, the feral cat would not be present without the presence of a rodent prey base, and the feral cat neither wants nor needs a human feeder, whose activity is sometimes as likely to bait cat predators such as coyotes and foxes into a habitat as to actually help bona fide feral cats to survive.
(See L.A. city council approves TNR: “project does not encourage feeding”)
(Beth Clifton photo)
Success, failure, & definition
Resumes the Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors, et al lawsuit, “Defendant claims that past practices in San Diego where shelters took in cats found by the public were not successful. According to the Humane Society of the United States, the average ‘save rate’ for cats in shelters in the U.S. is about 30%, meaning only 30% of cats entering shelters make it out alive,” a rate which is in itself triple the rate of circa 1990 and earlier.
The San Diego Humane Society & SPCA “states in its 2018-2019 impact report,” says the lawsuit, “that it took in over 15,000 cats brought in by the public as both stray and owner surrender, and its save rate was 86.7% . This indicates that prior to starting the ‘community cat’ program where cats were returned to where they were found,” the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA “had an incredibly successful cat program when it provided shelter and the possibility of adoption for all cats who were brought in.”
The Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors, et al lawsuit reminds judge and jury, if a jury is ever empaneled to hear the case, that “A ‘feral’ cat is defined” by California Food & Agriculture Code § 31752.5, as “a cat without owner identification of any kind whose usual and consistent temperament is extreme fear and resistance to contact with people. A feral cat is totally unsocialized to people.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Coyotes & freeways
“There are many rescue groups in San Diego County who ‘manage’ colonies of feral cats,” the lawsuit explains. “Each colony has a caregiver who traps each cat, has each cat spayed or neutered, provides food for, and traps any cat who appears to be sick or injured, and provides medical attention. Plaintiffs believe that these programs, for truly unadoptable feral cats, are beneficial and should not only be continued, but should be the focus of defendants’ program for spaying or neutering and releasing cats as long as the cat has a caregiver.”
The legal crux of the Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors, et al lawsuit appears to be that, “Defendants claim that cats will not be released into dangerous conditions,” but “deny that obviously dangerous areas pose a threat to the well-being of a cat who is dumped in such an area.
“Asked about this at a January 20, 2021 volunteer meeting,” the lawsuit alleges, San Diego Humane Society & SPCA chief veterinarian Zarah Hedge stated that “since coyotes are all over San Diego and plenty of cats live near busy highways,” neither of these factors are considered ‘dangerous’ when deciding whether or not to release a found cat.”
Exhibits attached to Pet Assistance Foundation and Paw Protectors, et al lawsuit describe several instances in which San Diego Humane Society & SPCA allegedly inappropriately “returned” cats “to the field,” sometimes purportedly contrary to promises made to the people who brought those cats to the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA in expectation that the cats would receive necessary health care and be rehomed via shelter adoption.
Betsy Denhart (left). (Beth Clifton collage)
“Someone takes responsibility”
Explained Pet Assistance Foundation director of communications and special projects Betsy Denhart, to ANIMALS 24-7, “Pet Assistance Foundation is concerned that the public understand the difference between return-to-field and traditional TNR [trap-neuter-release]. Traditional TNR calls for colony maintenance and care. Cats are monitored. Someone takes responsibility for their well-being. By not requiring caregivers, or even ensuring release sites are safe, return-to-field is just one more way humans fail cats.
“While some cats have acquired the skills to survive in some settings,” Denhart said, “it is incorrect to extrapolate that any cat can survive in any setting. Seeing an organization like the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA choose to perpetuate the myth that cats can take care of themselves and implement a policy of animal abandonment is heartbreaking.”
Agreed Dawn Danielson, former San Diego County Department Director of Animal Services, “The thought of putting healthy, friendly cats on the street breaks my heart. It troubles me greatly that there are actually people that think this is a humane alternative. There is no way to know if these cats have any experience on how to survive. When I was director of county animal services, for thirteen years we never turned away any cats brought to us. They were given a safe place, and by working with many rescues and the community, we were able to have one of the highest save rates for a municipal shelter our size in the country.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Answers don’t hold up to reality”
Resumed Denhart, “We’ve spent hours listening to representatives from Best Friends, Anna Wong of Stray Cat Alliance, [University of California at Davis shelter medicine professor] Kate Hurley, and the shelter director from Long Beach Animal Care preach about how great return-to-field is. We’ve read the propaganda, and are currently analyzing their statistics. They’ve got answers for everything, but they don’t all hold up to reality.
“Specifically,” Denhart emphasized, “we are opposed to releasing cats without known, accountable care givers; releasing cats into hostile or dangerous environments; and releasing friendly cats, period. We know the arguments about many of them having owners who would never think to look for their cats at a shelter, and that these cats don’t do well in shelters, but feel there are still better solutions than abandoning them and hoping they find their way home and that their owner is still around.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Best Friends will not control the narrative forever”
“We’re aware of the pressure from the large no kill groups for every shelter to adopt this practice,” Denhart continued. “San Diego Humane is big enough, and respected enough, to stand up to them and choose not to go along with it. Other animal advocacy organizations and individuals are doing just that. Watchdog groups are forming. The public is becoming aware. Best Friends [the Best Friends Animal Society] will not be able to control the narrative forever.
“I know that at this moment shelters are often judged by a single statistic, the live release rate,” Denhart finished. “But one day, the public will realize what an incomplete picture that number provides. One day, they will wake up and judge shelters by how they treat animals and serve communities, by their success in addressing the source of animal suffering and finding real solutions, not just reducing services and manipulating numbers.”
(See Dallas: dog attacks soar as “live release rate” climbs, Should giving shelter dogs & cats to university labs count as “live release”?, and “No-kill” debacle: will Pueblo bring “responsible sheltering” into vogue?)
(Beth Clifton collage)
“That’s the hard part for people to accept”
Reported Claire Trageser for KPBS on May 19, 2021, “The San Diego Humane Society & SPCA has ramped up its controversial policy of releasing cats back to the streets, despite a lawsuit from animal rights activists challenging the practice.
“In the city of San Diego between July 2019 and December 2020, the San Diego Humane Society released more than 1,300 cats,” Trageser said. “In the first 16 months of the program, from July 2018 to October 2019, the nonprofit also released more than 700 cats,” for a total of 2,000.
“In March 2021, the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA launched an expansion of that practice, which it’s calling the ‘Community Cat program.’ It means that not just feral cats who can’t live with humans will be released, but also some friendly cats.”
Responded San Diego Humane Society & SPCA chief executive Gary Weitzman, “That’s the hard part for people to accept, that those cats may be doing very well in their neighborhood outdoors. They may have multiple caretakers, and they may be thriving. Those cats are held here for medical exams, in holding cages. They are stressed to the max. So we have to consider, those cats that did really well outdoors, that were enjoying the environment, why don’t we just spay and neuter them and release them?”
Sharon Logan, president, Paw Protectors.
“Best Friends is just as bad as PETA”
But how does the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA deduce that a fat, friendly cat “did really well outdoors,” as opposed to being a household pet who escaped from indoors, or was trapped by a neighbor for bird-hunting, and will be killed upon reappearance?
Said Paw Protectors president Sharon Logan to ANIMALS 24-7, “There are no science-based or humane arguments for abandoning friendly, healthy, adoptable, non-feral domesticated cats on the streets to suffer and die. A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right, and evil doesn’t become good just because it’s currently an accepted practice by Best Friends and other ‘big box’ organizations.
“Best Friends,” Logan charged, “is just as bad as PETA,” the one national animal advocacy organization which continues to oppose neuter/return in almost every circumstance and practice high-volume shelter killing.
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IF cat lovers actually CARE about feral cats, they would be establishing cat containment facilities. I have visited one created by a private party in N California. The facility consisted of a separate quarantine area, and a very large facility for the cats who were vetted and vaccinated.
As Laurella Desborough has previously been informed, the facility “created by a private party in N. California” is the world-renowned Cat House on the Kings, founded in 1990, which––contrary to the impression conveyed by a National Geographic video many years ago––is NOT a holding facility for feral cats in lieu of practicing neuter/return. ANIMALS 24-7 profiled Cat House on the Kings in 2013: see New adoption center gives Fresno humane community a point of pride. Founder Lynea Lattanzio and spokesperson Tammy Barker were quick to point out that while Cat House on the Kings has sheltered many cats who for reasons of health or age were unsuitable for return to their former outdoor habitat, they have done more than twice as much spay/neuter work as sheltering, including for local neuter/return programs, and were otherwise chiefly engaged in finding homes for cats who were already socialized or were young enough to socialize for adoption.
Unless we are talking about truly wild cats, such as bobcats, lynx, lions, etc., all cats, even if considered “feral” by some people, are domesticated animals. By law, just like dogs, they are also considered companion animals. Having spent years working n shelters and handling cruelty cases, I’ve seen cats who stayed inside all the time and yet were very unsocialized, they would hide on anybody but their owners. I’ve also seen so-called “feral cats”, who I could handle after a few days of catching.
Thousands of years ago, when we domesticated dogs and cats, we took away their ability to survive as wildlife. The only way to solve the cat problem is to have cat licensing programs exactly as we have for dogs. Euthanasia is very sad but it is not cruel. Dumping domesticated animals out to “fend for themselves”, only assures them a slow, painful end of life. The purpose of Humane Societies is to “prevent suffering”.
It is a pernicious myth that cats were ever “domesticated” in the same sense as dogs, horses, cattle, goats, and sheep. At no time and in no place before the last decades of the 20th century, and then only in the U.S., Canada, and western Europe, have the majority of cats lived under human control, directly dependent upon humans for food and shelter, with humans controlling their reproduction. The earliest surveys of the U.S. cat population showed more than 90% living independently of humans in the first decade of the 20th century, and 74% still living independently of humans as of 1950. This was down to about 40% by 1990, and is now down to less than 10% through the success of spay/neuter programs, including especially neuter/return.
In short, the period of time within which most cats in the U.S. could ever have been described as “companion animals,” needing human help, is still less than one normal human lifespan.
Elsewhere around the world, from half to 90% of the cat population remain fully self-sufficient, with only a privileged few having ever had the luxury of becoming “companion animals.”
Reality is that cats are easily tamed wildlife, as are skunks and raccoons, for that matter, but the lifestyles of cats are much more compatible with humans than those of skunks and raccoons, which is probably more to the benefit of skunks and raccoons than the pretense of domestication has been to cats.
Biologists would disagree with your statement. Cats are domesticated. Humans just never bothered to contain them as we started to do with dogs roughly 75 years ago. If we hadn’t enacted dog ordinances we would have “colonies” of dogs everywhere.
If you are so sure that cats are wild then why do humans think they need to be fed, sheltered, and neutered? Why not just leave them alone like raccoons and skunks?
Actually biologists have informed my statement: no biologist yet has found a physiological distinction among ordinary house cats and feral cats, African wild cats, African desert cats, Scottish wildcats, and Norwegian skaucats which is greater than the distinctions routinely found among house cats and feral cats alone. Though classified generations ago as separate species and subspecies by “splitters,” genetics demonstrates that the “lumpers” were basically right all along, and that a cat is a cat is cat, and that is that, except that cat populations living in relative isolation from each other tend to develop superficial family distinctions, just as do humans.
The overwhelming majority of “domestic” dogs, meanwhile, have largely lived outside of direct human control of their fecundity and have scavenged for much of their food, much like feral cats, throughout the history of civilization. And, indeed, most of the world, including the U.S. until about 75 years ago, has historically had small “colonies” of dogs everywhere. But there is an important distinction: while most dogs have historically been street dogs, large numbers of dogs have also been line-bred to accentuate specific traits for at least 5,000 years, creating a population of dogs who are not suited to life as street dogs, do not thrive when abandoned to live as street dogs, and therefore are dependent upon humans to an extreme degree. This has never happened with cats. Even the tamest indoor cat can, and will, “hybridize” with African wild cats, African desert cats, Scottish wildcats, and Norwegian skaucats if allowed the opportunity, whereas most dogs, if encountering wolves, coyotes, or jackals, will become a wolf, coyote, or jackal meal.
As ANIMALS 24-7 has repeatedly pointed out, including in the article precipitating this discussion, authentic feral cats have no need of being fed and sheltered, and should not be, as being treated as a domesticated animal tends to change their behavior in problematic ways. The reason to sterilize feral cats is twofold: to prevent breeding with roaming pet cats, contributing to the problem often simplistically described as “pet overpopulation,” and to prevent feral cats themselves from proliferating in a problematic manner, as they will if sufficient food sources are available to permit this. If not fed, feral cats, like other wildlife, tend to disperse to whatever the carrying capacity of the habitat is, and fecundity and mortality thereafter tend to remain in approximate balance. When fed, however, feral cats––like raccoons, skunks, and all other wildlife––will tend to breed far beyond the carrying capacity of the habitat. This is because wildlife mortality is high, and therefore wild animals are capable of breeding at a rate that is well beyond optimum for any habitat where either the food supply has been artificially increased or mortality has been artificially diminished, or both. The latter usually occurs, relative to cats, when humans have extirpated larger predators, e.g. coyotes, foxes, and bobcats, from a habitat which may at the same time have increased populations of mice as result of human food production and storage.
As a person who has loved cats all my life, and as a member of a family that has always adopted cats from “the streets,” I advocate for cats every day, via social media platforms. Every day, I cry. Every day, I pray for a humane, practicable way to save cats and ensure they have respect, protection, and good care. After fourteen months of the pandemic, I know we are back, if not to square one, at least far below where we would otherwise have been, had not the policy on spay/neuter been changed. Firstly, we must get spay/neuter declared “essential” once again! As with anyone or anything else, scarcity drives valuation.
And in the interim, I pray every day for humane, workable alternatives to what we currently have, and do.
Sharing to socials with gratitude and pleas for better ideas.
Enjoyed your piece on roaming cats, be they loose pets or feral, but didn’t see a solution rendered to deal with the problem? Am I missing an element here? Or is this a problem without a solution?
What about licensing of pet cats as a partial solution, with I.D. required if the owner chooses to let them roam the neighborhood? I am, as a birder, opposed to any permission to allow pet cats to roam; just an excuse in my mind NOT to deal with the litter box, etc. And they defecate, fight one another, and do kill a fair share of birds in addition to rodents, to say nothing of the likelihood of them getting hit by a vehicle, being poisoned, or caught by a coyote, fox or dog!
In Ohio, one may trap them if on your property, and do whatever with them after ‘that’ point! This is not much of a solution either.
I keep both my dog and cat IN the house, and they’re quite content with that scenario.
The Pet Assistance Foundation and Pet Protectors advocate a two-track approach to animal control cat-handling: true ferals would be put into neuter/return programs, as has been done for 20-30 years in much of the U.S., while tame cats, meaning those who can be petted after a day or two, would be offered for adoption. Back when neuter/return began in a big way, from 20 to 30 years ago, keeping cats in a shelter was a death sentence for most within five days or less, due to the high volume of incoming cats, but cat intakes today in most communities are a seventh or less of what they were then, and vastly reduced kitten intake has translated into vastly improved adoption prospects for adult cats. In addition, the advent of microchipping has approximately quadrupled the chances of a lost cat being identified and returned to a home. This hardly means that cats are not still killed due to lack of shelter space, but as the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA has itself demonstrated, a “live release rate” for cats of upward of 70% is quite possible, if a shelter is not always full of feral cats as well as those who are socialized.
Cat licensing, which was in effect in one of the jurisdictions where Beth was an animal control officer, is unenforceable, as Beth learned first hand, partly because of the extent of owner non-compliance, but mostly because there is as yet no way to identify a cat seen at large without actually capturing the cat. Cats notoriously easily shed collars, ear tags tear out with scratching and the wounds become infected, and microchips and tattoos cannot be read from a distance. This does not mean a technology suitable for facilitating cat licensing will never exist, but it does not exist yet.
I just wanted to thank you for covering the lawsuit Pet Assistance is involved with in San Diego. This issue is looming so large, and Governor Newsom seems to have created an onramp into every shelter in California for this and related inhumane policies. We feel the best way to combat RTF is to raise public awareness and outrage. Your story is an invaluable tool towards that end.
With sincere gratitude,
Betsy Denhart
Pet Assistance Foundation
P.S. I was startled to see my picture in the article–thank you, Beth, for somehow finding one that doesn’t make me cringe in this unforgiving era of ubiquitous high definition cameras 😄
Truly low-cost spay/neuter services are so essential if we are to protect cats. We have several S/N clinics in our financially struggling area–some occasional, some permanent–BUT, the cost to alter a cat still often ranges between $35-$75–cheaper than going through a regular vet, but a sum still out of reach of many residents. We need to understand and accept that many people can’t amass that kind of money to look after a pet, even if they care deeply about the animal, while also paying their own food, medical, and housing costs.
Another recent article on this page criticizes the way some big animal welfare groups collect donations and don’t do much else–well, this would be one way these big groups could do something meaningful. They could take a page from Easter Seals, etc. and have regional centers where people can bring pets for very low-cost or free, basic care. I don’t think we’ll see this, because not enough people are agitating for it, but maybe it’s time to start!
I started out as an animal control officer in 1976 with the County. What Kate Hurley is advocating is what was done back then! Shelters didn’t take in cats and if they had to the cat was killed in 72 hours. They were not available for adoption. I was appalled. At that time the folks managing animal shelters were retired military who were not animal advocates! If a member of the public happened to see a cat they wanted the person could take it but it wasn’t altered prior to adoption. I don’t know what group got the law changed but it was great when cats were made available for adoption and were altered. The shelter managers at the time didn’t like this but gradually all the retired military were replaced with female animal lovers!!🤗 Anyway, Hurley may not know it but she’s just trying to put things back the way it was! It didn’t work 30 years ago and it won’t work now!