Huge Thank You to area shelters!

In the past month, several area shelters have really stepped up and taken in cats and kittens! Here are some ballpark numbers because, hopefully, they will all be taking more!

West Suburban Humane Society has taken 37 kittens and one adult from us. That is a savings to Feral Fixers of over $2,000 in surgeries and initial vaccinations and of course, hundreds of hours of foster time! St. Sophia’s has been working on several situations and has taken over 25 cats & kittens. ADOPT has taken over 20 cats and kittens into their shelter and fosters. PURRS of Naperville has taken 10 adults and youngsters from us and more are in the works. Strays Halfway House took 2 cats from my house on the day of the flood and has taken in several more kittens straight from the outdoors.

The kittens ranged in age from 1 day old bottle-babies to 3 months, so in just a few weeks the adoption market will be flooded with all of these wonderful kittens! June is Adopt-A-Cat Month and by the end of June, your options will be endless!

It encourages me to no end that shelters are stepping up and putting their energies where they are needed most! We are creating a deficit of kittens but we are still getting multiple calls every day of 2 – 6 kittens in each call. Please talk about TNR to your friends, family and neighbors BEFORE KITTENS HAPPEN!

Huge gratitude to all of the area shelters!!!

Times May Be A-changin’!

Recently, Dr Kate Hurley, Director of the UC Davis Koret Shelter Medicine Program, has changed her philosophy. Previously, trap & kill was her advice and practice as she was brought in to advise on many difficult situations regarding cat overpopulation and shelter crowding.

180 degree turnaround later – the acknowledgement that feral cats will never be happy in a home, so “sheltering” them only leads to their death. Her proposal is that animal controls no longer accept feral cats. Accepting cats only to be euthanized is finally being seen as a useless practice.

I hope you take the time to read the FAQs, but let me repeat the last paragraph:

“Some members of the public will be unhappy regardless of the strategy a shelter or community chooses to manage community cats. However, the data suggest that, if the alternative is euthanasia, most people will support non-lethal strategies even if these represent an imperfect solution. There are no easy answers nor is there a magical solution that affordably, humanely and safely eliminates the many issues associated with cats in communities. In the long run, strategies that focus on removing dangerous, sick and injured cats, re-homing adoptable cats and providing resources to help community cats and people co-exist peacefully may be more cost effective, palatable and successful than reliance on continued removal and euthanasia of unwanted cats.“

This is novel thinking and it is TIME! There are many elected officials this year that are new to their jobs and hopefully open to new ideas that will fix the issues we have had for so very long.

TALK THIS UP!!!