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by PATRICK BABCOCK
Lifestyles Editor
If you’ve ever wanted a pet cat, now is the time to invest – just make sure you get it fixed. June is the American Humane Association’s Adopt-a-Cat Month, an information campaign aimed at putting an end to rampant, feral cat overpopulation in the United States.
Kennel Manager John S. Graves at the Watauga County Humane Society said the program is for the benefit of adult cats, in particular, and less for fixing the overpopulation issue at large.
“The main reason I feel that we do it, because we only do it for adult cats, we don’t do it for kittens, is because it’s kitten season right now and kittens are blowing up, people are coming in here wanting to adopt kittens left and right,” Graves said. “I feel like this can kind of help push the adult cats a little more and they don’t keep getting passed over and hanging out here the whole time.”
But he does not deny a feral cat infestation.
“Oh, of
course, absolutely [there is an overpopulation problem]. All I can say
for that is spay, neuter, spay, neuter, spay, neuter,” he said. “A lot
of towns, a lot of places now, have low-cost spay/neuter clinics and
spay/neuter programs. If you contact your local shelter they can
usually help you out if finances are tight, of course, which for
everyone right now they are.”
Will the Adopt-a-Cat Month address any overpopulation issues? Hopefully, Graves said.
“We can
always hope. At least by adopting, we know that people are getting a
fixed cat instead of going out there and getting another cat and not
getting it fixed.”
Graves is also optimistic about local overpopulation problems.
“I think
Boone’s got a little bit lesser population problem because we have been
running this low-cost spay/neuter program for about 15 years here, and
that has helped run the numbers down a lot,” he said.
According
to the Web site of the Humane Society of the United States, a fertile
cat can produce on average three litters of kittens a year, with each
litter averaging four to six kittens in size. There are between 4,000
and 6,000 animal shelters in the United States, which, when compared to
the amount of dogs and cats that enter each year, between 6 and 8
million, a disturbing trend arises.
Three to
4 million dogs and cats are euthanized by shelters in the United States
each year. Only 2 to 5 percent of cats that enter adoption centers are
reclaimed by their owners.
The
AHA’s Adopt-a-Cat Month is geared toward remedying these problems, but
Pet Place owner Madolyn P. Cearley is skeptical of its effectiveness.
“It’s got to help in some way,” she said. “Does it stop the problem? Probably not.”
Cearley said that The Pet Place sells between two and three cats a week
and has no numbers to back up a significant increase in sales during
the month of June.
Cearley
cited local Watauga County feral cat problems, saying that the problem
is too widespread for an event such as Adopt-a-Cat Month to make much
of a difference.
“There’s
just so many feral cats in the county that almost every neighborhood
has some,” she said. “We even have some around the shopping center here
where the store is.”
In the
end, she said, cat owners need to take up the responsibility of fixing
the overpopulation epidemic, as there’s very little that organizations
like AHA can do.
“There
are too many people in the county that either get a free kitten or
their neighbor has a cat and they give them a cat and they don’t spend
the time or money to get them fixed and you end up with litters of
unwanted kittens,” she said. “So, the Humane Society and
Animal Control help, but it’s the general population of people who have cats who can actually fix the problem.
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oes it stop the problem? Probably not.” Then let's do the adult and responsible thing and stop, cease, and desist perpetuating feral pet colonies and the suffering it causes your unwanted pets and our natural fauna! It is neither compassionate, humane, nor non-lethal!
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