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No. 20 Vol. 2
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World Spay Day
F
by Elsie Walker ebruary 27th is World Spay Day. Originally called “Spay Day USA “, it was started by the late actress and animal advocate Doris Day. The day was established to bring awareness of, and to educate people to, the need to spay and neuter their pets. The once national focus has now taken on an international one. Spaying and neutering can not only help a pet to stay healthy, but also helps decrease the feral and stray cat population and helps to decrease the shelter overpopulation of cats and dogs that can lead to the euthanasia of otherwise adoptable pets. As World Spay Day draws near, an area veterinarian and an area animal rescue group member talked about the importance of spaying and neutering cats and dogs. Dr. Michelle Hewitt, of Netcong, a DVM who practices at the Black River Veterinary Hospital in Chester reflected on cat and dog over-population and shared the health benefits to pets of spaying and neutering. “Cat and dog overpopulation is one of the biggest challenges we face in animal welfare today. Spaying and neutering is imperative to help control overpopulation as well as providing multiple health benefits. Spaying a female dog or cat, or neutering a male, helps decrease the chances of objectionable urine marking behavior, aggression and running away to find a mate. Spaying prevents potentially fatal uterine infections, ovarian and uterine tumors and helps prevent mammary tumors. Neutering prevents testicular tumors and helps prevent prostate disease. Dogs and cats can
start to reproduce as early as four – six months of age, so it is important to talk to your veterinarian about the proper age for spaying or neutering your pet,” Hewitt said. As for controlling overpopulation, spaying/neutering helps people from suddenly having puppies or kittens they can’t afford to keep and passing them on to (sometimes already over-crowded) shelters and helps reduce the number of stray and feral cats roaming areas. To get an idea of how fast an unspayed/unneutered population can grow, PetKeen (www.petkeen.com) notes that “An unspayed cat can give birth to 24 kittens in one year.” The impact of spaying and neutering to control cat over-population is understood by the Mt. Olive TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release) Project. It came into existence because of that. Recently, Michelle Lerner, of Flanders, a member of that organization, shared its experience in controlling the local cat population, and also how it can help lowincome residents to get their pets spayed and neutered. “The Mt. Olive TNR Project is a local organization made up of residents who volunteer to humanely control the population of cats in Mt. Olive. We started in 2009 after finding out that in 2008, the town had impounded 181 cats and euthanized 141 of them, and had spent $20,000 to do so, while the number of cats on the streets and the complaints about them were only increasing. We got a Trap, Neuter, Return (TNR) ordinance passed to allow us to trap, neuter and vaccinate, and return feral cats to structured care and sheltering outside, while removing
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kittens and friendly strays for fostering and adoption,” she said. Lerner shared the impressive results of the organization’s efforts: “…the street cat population in Mt. Olive has plummeted to close to zero, while the town now impounds fewer than 20 cats per year and only euthanizes those too sick or injured to be stabilized with medical care, which is usually fewer than three per year and often zero. The known (TNR’d) feral cat population is down to fewer than 15 cats in the entire town, most continued on page 6