What we are finding in this amazing world of animal welfare
is that everyone has a cat problem. In
the shelter world there is a “cat season”.
This is the time of the year when cat intake goes through the roof and
there are way too many cats than there is space for. This results in alarming euthanasia rates at
traditional county/city run shelters. What does it look like? Well to give you
an idea – Jan, Feb, Mar months typically
see an intake of around 49-55 cats a month, during kitten season and summer months
it shoots up to around 200-279 a month.
Why? Kittens. Spring is when kittens begin arriving. The question we always ask ourselves is when
it will end? Some years it starts around March other years later like May, and continues
all the way through to the fall.
The traditional shelters who are not no kill will euthanize
cats to make space for new ones coming in because there is just no room at the
inn, so to speak.
In recent years, lead organizations such as the ASPCA, HSUS,
Best Friend Animal Society, UC Davis Veterinary School and countless others
have suggested that it is time to change what shelters are doing.
What I think most people don’t realize is that unless a
community is no kill, cats and kittens have a better survival rate if left in the
community. But what about cats finding
their owners? People think they should take
a cat to a shelter so it will find its owners or a new home. But the truth is
only about 2-4% of cats turned in as strays find their owners. Last year only 22 cats were reunited with
their owners here at LHS out of 854 stray cats turned into LHS. The good news is we don’t euthanize for
space, but the bad news is in the counties and other shelters, between 49% and
71% were euthanized last year. If you
live in Danville that number shoots up to 94% euthanized which equates to 2,354
cats’ lives lost. No cat or dog should
have to die just because the shelter doesn’t have space.
What the lead organizations suggest is that shelters stop
taking in cats if they intend to euthanize healthy cats to make room. They should not take in kittens if all they
intend to do is euthanize them. They
also suggest that people need to leave adult cats alone if they find them
around their property. 66% of lost cats
will find their way home if left alone.
Which is much better than the 2-4% that find their owners from
shelters.
What do you do then as a community member? You have choices if you find kittens. If they are really tiny they are best left
with their mother, let them be and check on them, if you don’t see a mother the
mother might be around hiding until you leave.
If they are older,
the best choice is to notify the shelter in the area you found them and you can
then foster the kittens until they are old enough to be adopted out. Due to their undeveloped immune system, young
kittens are most at risk for disease and even at the best of shelters. People
say they don’t have any place to keep them but kittens are happy in a second
bedroom, laundry room, bathroom, closet or basement. They would live in a tiny cage for weeks in
our shelter, living in any room in a home is far better and healthier.
The second thing that you need to consider is that if you
find kittens, there is an unfixed mother in the area producing litters. Try to catch the mother and get her
fixed. Many of the counties and here in
Lynchburg have programs to make that affordable. Otherwise you will end up with more and more
kittens over the years and this just perpetuates the current problem at the
shelters.
The exception to everything being suggested above is that if
the animal is in distress or needing medical care or a public safety issue it
should go to an organization who can help them.
So let the cats find their way back home instead of taking
them to the shelter, leave tiny kittens where they are because there is likely
a mother around, and if you find older kittens, foster them. But the only solution to the amount of
kittens and cats we have in our community is spay/neutering.
Give us a call and we can help get your cat fixed so they
stop producing unwanted litters.
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