Rescued, My Favorite Breed According to Marci, the three steps to reducing the cat population are: By Christa Stout
Kitty population booms in pandemic
FOSTER FUNDING FOREVER HOMES And all help is appreciated.
WOW
- No really, WOW actually stands for Watching Over Whiskers (what a great name!) and is a wonderful 8-year-old organization that was started by Marci Bowling when she realized there was an overpopulation of cats, many of them feral, whose life expectancy and quality of life were dismal. At the time, Marci was fostering for another group and she wanted to contribute to a solution herself, hence WOW was born. Her primary focus at first was moms and kittens be-cause they were affected the most by being in inclement weather or chased and killed by other animals. At any one time, WOW has 15 to 30 foster homes with 150 to 200 cats. They did recently add a headquarters on Sunshine Street in Springfield, where they can bring cats to be socialized or re-cover from surgeries. But the need is so much bigger and their most desperate demand is for foster parents. Do you have time to spend an hour or two a month helping out?
As Marci explained, the overpopulation will not change until cats are spayed and neutered and the endless reproduction cycle is disrupted - new sets of kittens are born at least every 2 - 4 months and these in turn will reproduce in another few months. Therefore WOW is very much involved in TNR (Trap/Neuter/Return), a healthy and painless way of disrupting the reproduction of the feral cat population. WOW will train people in TNR, these people are the boots on the ground who will need to make sure that no traps are ever left unattended;
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and that cats are never fed for more than two weeks without getting them spayed or neutered. Marci says this past year has been especially daunting. When COVID hit, 90 percent of the cats gave birth, because there was no manpower to do TNR and therefore prevent a new set of kittens. Fifty percent of these kittens passed away within 6 months,
WOW can be reached at:
Facebook.com/watchingoverwhiskers WatchingOverWhiskers.org
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