Effort aims to reduce county’s homeless kittens
Pet Alliance’s 6-year campaign includes low-cost spay-neuter clinic
Hoping to stop a soaring increase in homeless kittens brought to its door, the Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando is leading a drive to trap, neuter and release tens of thousands of free-roaming felines over the next six years.
The nonprofit’s Community Cat Initiative is a partnership with local rescue groups and Orange County Animal Services, and its first big step will be the opening of a low-cost spayneuter clinic in East Orange, set for late this month. Though the clinic mostly will serve private pet owners, it will devote each Friday to the sterilization of homeless cats, which will be kept overnight and then released back to the community.
The Pet Alliance plans to target colonies of 35 to 100 or more cats, capturing up to 40 at a time for spaying and neutering, while others address smaller numbers.
“Colony cats are very different than cats that live in a neighborhood and are sort of fed by everybody,” said Stephen Bardy, executive director for the Pet Alliance. “They are feral cats. You can’t really handle them, and they’re not adoptable. But if you
can get 80 [percent] to 85 percent of the population sterilized, you can stabilize the numbers.”
Animal advocates call them “community cats,” saying the term “feral” evokes images of mange and rabies. By whatever label, there are an estimated 70,000 of them now living in the Orange County’s parking lots, abandoned buildings, trailer parks and woods. And in the past two years, record numbers of their kittens have been brought to the Pet Alliance.
In 2016, there were 1,900. In 2017, it climbed to 2,400 — as more than 9,000 cats and kittens were brought to Orange County Animal Services.
“I knew we needed to do something,” Bardy said.
In June, the Pet Alliance held its first Community Cat monthly meeting, inviting volunteers already doing some of this work on a smaller scale.
One of them was Bill Gaskin, vice president of CARE Feline TNR, a nonprofit trap-neuter-release program started in 1996. Gaskin, a 30-year-old flight attendant, helps to lead an all-volunteer effort that captures homeless cats and transports them for surgery, either at Orange County Animal Services, which does the sterilizations for free, or participating veterinary offices that reduce their fees.
“Our volunteers are out there trapping every single night,” he said. “One of our volunteers has done over 1,000 cats herself. And a lot of our volunteers pay out of their own pockets for the surgeries, which gets to be very expensive.”
In its 22 years, the organization has helped to spay or neuter some 40,000 cats.
But with the region’s population of humans — and their pets — growing, CARE Feline TNR has struggled to try to keep pace. Humans, after all, too often let their pets breed freely, only to abandon them to shelters or the wild.
“We believe this spay and neuter goal for all cats in the area … is the only way to help reduce the number,” Gaskin said.
Government animal-control agencies across the country used to routinely euthanize the cats, and some still do, but the colonies invariably grew back, sometimes with disastrous effect on local bird populations.
Researchers, including those at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, have found it is actually more effective — not to mention more humane — to trap, neuter and release than to euthanize or relocate. The latter, it turns out, only produces an opening for new, unsterilized cats to move in and reproduce.
But to be successful, a TNR effort has to be comprehensive.
Under the Community Cat Initiative, the Pet Alliance will focus on the largest colonies — groups over 35 cats, identified through nuisance reports to the county and rescue groups. CARE Feline TNR would handle groups between six and 35. And Orange County Animal Services will continue to address cases of one to five cats through its free trap-neuter-release program for residents, started in 2015, available by calling 311.
“The TNR program is actually one of our most indemand,” said spokeswoman Alyssa Chandler.
The county is also putting up $750,000 for the east side clinic. The one-time contribution will cover the
building, equipment and furniture, while the Pet Alliance provides the staff and bankrolls the ongoing operation.
The clinic, near the intersection of Sophie Boulevard and East Colonial Drive, will offer low-cost sterilizations of both cats and dogs Tuesdays through Thursdays, and on Saturdays it will offer low-cost vaccinations.
If all goes well, a second low-cost clinic, on the west side of the county, is expected to open sometime next year, Bardy said.
Helgrit Addison, a Pet Alliance volunteer who works in the cat room, hopes the effort can help the creatures lead better, healthier lives. In the past 16 years, Addison, now 63, has tried on her own to capture the homeless cats she finds roaming around her Orlando condominium complex and have them spayed and neutered. So far, she has succeeded with 1,076 of them.
“I used to look out the window and see these kittens and think, ‘Oh, they’re so cute,’” she said. “It was only as I read up on the issue that I realized, no, it wasn’t cute. It was an enormous problem.”
As she talks, she strokes the fur of her latest charge — a friendly 2-year-old whiteand-brown stray named Sallie.
“I brought her in to be spayed,” Addison said. “But when I did, I found out she was already pregnant. Sallie had four kittens, but one died.”
Now, the Pet Alliance is looking for adoptive homes for the three survivors — and for Sallie.