COMMENTARY
Euthanizing of cats is an avoidable fate
The cat named Apple peered hopefully Monday out of her cage. She reached a paw through the bars, a sly attempt to attract a passing visitor.
Apple is barely a year old, with a yen for fun and classic good looks — all black save for white paws and chest. It should not be long before she wraps herself around somebody’s heart and rides the wave of infatuation out of the SPCA’s Town of Tonawanda shelter.
A half-dozen of Apple’s fellow cats were not as lucky last week. With every cage filled, with other area shelters stuffed to their brims, with no room in foster homes, the SPCA did what it had not done on any other day this year: Kill healthy, adoptable cats.
The killing is quick. The killing is painless — a shot of sodium pentobarbital, and an instant later the light goes out of the eyes. If more cat owners sterilized their pets, the killing would be avoidable.
SPCA vet tech Sally Budik attended to a sick cat in a back-room Monday. I asked her how it felt to put down animals she works to save.
“Let’s just say it has been nice not having to do that,” said Budik, standing amid cages and stainless steel operating tables.
“We hit a brick wall last week,” lamented Barbara Carr, the SPCA’s director.
“No,” Budik said, “we hit reality.”
Reality is a harsh place, whether you work in an animal shelter or simply care about cats. Reality hits every summer, when — mainly because of breeding cycles — the population of stray, abandoned or newborn cats hits a peak.
There was no room at the inn last week at the SPCA, even though cages fill not just the adoption rooms, but line the walls of the front lobby.
The SPCA is not the only overstuffed shelter. For the first time in its short history, the No Vacancy sign went up at Concord’s 10 Lives shelter, too.
The problem, simply, is that too many people do not get their cats sterilized — or they wait until after their young cat has her first litter.
“If we want to be a community where cats are not euthanized,” Carr said, “then people have to step up.”
With a multitude of weapons, we are winning the war against cat overpopulation. The SPCA sterilizes all of its cats — some as young as nine weeks — before adoption. It has persuaded many area vets to sterilize pre-adult cats.
“Most vets now sterilize at four months,” Carr said. “It used to be six months, by which point a lot of the cats were already pregnant. A lot of the overpopulation comes from that one ‘mistake’ litter.”
Beyond that, the SPCA and other shelters are bringing cats to the people. Adoptable cats can be found everywhere from pet stores to farmers’ markets, from general stores to even a Buffalo picture- framing shop. “We are up to 20 off-site locations,” Carr said. “If we just sat back at the shelter, we would never reach all the people who might adopt.”
It all is working. The SPCA a decade ago annually took in about 13,000 cats. The number by 2004 dropped to about 10,000. Last year, it fell to 8,600. Barely 100 healthy, adoptable cats were euthanized last year at the SPCA. Until last week, this year’s number was zero.
Back in the SPCA’s cat-adoption room, Apple caught the eye of Ronald and Ernestine Coley and their son, 6.
“It’s so sad that people don’t love them like they’re supposed to be loved,” said Ronald Coley. “Look at all of the cats here.”
Given her good looks and personality, Apple will soon find a new home. She is, as the summer turns crueler, one of the lucky ones.
