The Rescuer has to be YOU!

Anyone who is local and is reading this blog probably knows about the boxes of kittens being left near a barn in Baldwinsville. Though on an emotional level, cat lovers locally are out for blood, on a practical level, the best thing we can do when we find out who is doing this is to spay his or her cats! I wrote a letter to the Editor of the Post Standard offering to do just that, figuring that there would be no response. But just in case...

What we got was an angry message on our answering machine from a woman who had a stray cat in her yard. "I have called you eight times, and you haven't called me back." Okay, maybe once or twice, and we might have missed it. We get about 20 messages a day, and simply can't return calls when we have no hope or advice to give. Since she wanted help with spaying a stray cat, we weren't sure why she was calling us anyway. Deb called her back to give her the phone number for the Spay and Neuter Syracuse (SAN S) clinic. The woman said that she saw an article in the newspaper offering to spay stray cats for free. It must have been my letter she saw. She had a stray cat in her yard who had already had kittens and she feared she would become pregnant again. Yup, a pretty safe bet. Deb told her about the clinic, but when she heard that she would be expected to pay $85, the conversation ended quickly.

Should we have offered to pay for the surgery? After all, we do it for the cats we take in. And the kittens before they leave us. Anything over 2 pounds gets altered, without exception. But that's the problem. We are teachers who don't get paid over the summer. We have a budget, like most people, but unlike most people, vet bills come before clothes, vacations, eating out, new cars, magazine and newspaper subscriptions (good thing we're both librarians!) and a lot of other things we would like, but the pet overpopulation problem comes first. It's a conscious choice on our part and I'm not complaining. But if we have spayed 2000 cats, can't this person pay for one? At a "low cost" clinic, yet?! Couldn't she take up a collection among her neighbors?! ! After all, she would be preventing a neighborhood problem. Couldn't she even call the clinic and see if she could pay a little at a time? Nope. It's not her cat. It's not ours, either, nor is it the responsibility of any of the other rescuers who do this work out of pocket and with small fundraisers now and then. Homeless cats are a community problem and it's about time more people in the community helped with the solution.

So what will happen to this cat? We don't know. Perhaps our caller will find a shelter or rescue with room. Perhaps someone new will work with the Cat Coalition, or Wayward Paws to open their home to a foster cat, giving them another place to put this cat and others in the future. Or maybe she will just stay where she is, eating out of garbage cans and giving birth to more litters of kittens, who will, in turn give birth to their own kittens and so on. And another feral cat colony is born.