Free Spay/Neuter Saves Cats Lives

These are some of the 1,700 lucky cats we've fixed so far this year. With the help of local vets we expect to do at least 3,000 by year end.

Our thanks to the many newsletter readers that placed our Free Spay/Neuter posters on bulletin boards last March. We had a big surge in activity and are on our way to having a record year -- with 1,700 cats fixed during the first 7 months -- almost as many as we did during all of 2006. We couldn't have done this without your help. We've enclosed another poster with this newsletter, hoping you'll post it too. This is a particularly important time to focus on spay/neuter -- because the 2007 kittens will become sexually active this fall. The sooner they're fixed the better.

Our programs are totally decentralized. We work not to rescue cats but to enable their caregivers to keep them. The people we service are generally at a crossroad. They know they can't continue with the cats the way they are -- unsterilized -- but don't want to take them to a shelter to be killed. Typical calls we get from people feeding stray cats are that they're concerned that if they don't remove them, they'll multiply into a huge colony and their neighbors will object. If they're indoor pets, the concerns are that the male cats are spraying all over their home or the females are driving them crazy yowling because they're in heat.

Through the simple act of providing free vouchers, redeemable at a local veterinary clinic, their concerns about the cats go away and they can -- and do -- keep them. Control of their cat "problem" is left in their hands -- but sterilization greatly facilitates the outcome. Indoors or out, cats are much easier to live with once they've been fixed.

The beauty of this program is that it leaves the cats in the community, improves their lives and their relationships with their caregivers, while slowing down the overall number of kittens. It's a "win, win, win" situation. And, the educational value is tremendous -- as it replaces traditional lethal methods of population control with compassionate care.

This is just one example of how an animal welfare program differs from animal control. The focus of animal welfare is in preserving life while containing numbers, while animal control essentially takes in cats and dogs independent of their ability to provide care for them, euthanizing the inevitable excess. Before 1990, the animal control model was the national standard. But, since then, many communities have questioned the ethics of killing healthy cats and dogs just because they're at a shelter -- and have developed animal welfare programs working at reducing and eventually eliminating their reliance on euthanasia. Typically this model involves a community collaboration of all shelters, rescues, vet clinics and concerned citizens working together to increase adoption rates -- while reducing overall populations through pro-active spay/neuter. An essential part of this is returning animal control work to local governments so that humane organizations no longer broadcast blurry messages on the situational sanctity of cat and dog life.

At their July 18th meeting, Washtenaw County authorized funding for a $7.5 million animal control facility to replace HSHV's very old and tired 10,000 sq ft complex. The county will provide a $1 million gift, and finance the balance through county-backed bonds.

This new top-of-the-line 30,000 sq ft facility will be built adjacent to their existing Cherry Hill Road buildings and will be titled to the county until HSHV repays the bonds over 7 years. Then it will belong to HSHV outright. Shelter capacity will double to house up to 200 animals. Washtenaw county's two animal control officers will be based there, and HSHV's full-service veterinary clinic, administrative offices, and public areas will be greatly expanded.

HSHV will look to the community for $3 million (over and above the $3.5 million already committed from major donors) to repay the bonds, and will also need considerably more to fund their increased operating costs. They now run about $2 million annually. Included in this amount is about $800,000 for animal control -- the state-mandated responsibility of county taxes. Washtenaw County tax dollars reimburse HSHV for only about 1/4 of the total cost -- with HSHV using general community donations to cover the balance.