Best Friends Animal Society encourages people to use National Feral Cat Day on Oct. 16 as an opportunity to learn how they can be part of the solution to make life better for homeless cats.

Some simple steps to help homeless cats:

• If you feed stray cats, spay and neuter them so that the breeding cycle is stopped.

• Keep your own cats from becoming statistics. Keep them indoors. Get them spayed or neutered, vaccinated and micro-chipped. If you want your cat to have outside experiences, please consider screening-in a porch or patio, building a cattery, investing in special cat fencing, and/or teaching your cat to walk on a harness.

• Support your local community trap/neuter/return (TNR) groups. Donate — even small amounts add up. Volunteer a couple of hours a month.

• Become a caregiver for a local cat colony.

• Foster adoptable kittens or lost house cats rescued during TNR operations.

About Best Friends Animal Society:

Best Friends Animal Society is a nonprofit, membership organization building no-kill programs and partnerships that will bring about a day when there are No More Homeless Pets®. The society’s leading initiatives in animal care and community programs are coordinated from its Kanab, Utah, headquarters, the country’s largest no-kill sanctuary. This work is made possible by the personal and financial support of a grassroots network of members and community partners across the nation. In 2009, Best Friends celebrates its 25th anniversary. Learn more at http://www.bestfriends.org

[PHOTO: juliezickefoose.com]

Cats, like their humans, are naturally drawn to Las Vegas. The promise of easy riches, free-flowing catnip and the bright lights can be irresistible.

But the outlook is grim for the unlucky few who lose it all and don’t have bus fare back home. They end up begging for handouts at the all-you-can-eat buffets, and seeking refuge during the day from the brutal desert sun.

Fortunately, Best Friends Animal Society has teamed up with a Las Vegas casino to set up a trap-neuter-return program to help Las Vegas ferals. Here’s the story from Best Friends’ staff writer Sandy Miller:

Vegas hotel-casino to have trap/neuter/return program

By Sandy Miller, Best Friends’ staff writer

They aren’t looking to win a seven-figure jackpot that would set them up for life. They aren’t wishing for a lucky turn of the dice. And they couldn’t care less about all those slot machines.

All they’re looking for are regular meals and a safe place to live out their lives. And thanks to Best Friends Animal Society, along with some help from local volunteers, the cats at one large Las Vegas hotel and casino are getting just that.

Like a number of businesses, the hotel-casino has discovered that the best way ― and indeed the most humane way ― to deal with the feral cats on its property is to set up a trap/neuter/return program. So Best Friends staff and local volunteers are setting up feeding stations in areas of the property that don’t have tourist traffic.

“The hotel has done the right thing,” says Shelly Kotter, campaign specialist for Focus on Felines, one of four campaigns aimed at reaching the goal of No More Homeless Pets. “It’s a long-term solution that will have benefits for the hotel and the cats.”

Kotter said she doesn’t want to reveal the name of the hotel-casino because people might abandon their cats there.

Best Friends staff and volunteers will humanely trap the 15 to 20 cats living on the hotel property and take them to a Las Vegas veterinary clinic that has agreed to provide low-cost spaying and neutering.

“Volunteers will be a big part of it,” Kotter says.

Feral and shy cats account for a large percentage of the five million animals that are killed in U.S. shelters each year. But it’s been shown that trapping and killing feral cats does nothing to keep their numbers down. Once those cats are gone, other unaltered cats will simply take their place, bringing nuisances like spraying and late-night mating calls with them. And it doesn’t take long for their populations to grow.

What does work is trap/neuter/return, or TNR. The cats are humanely trapped and taken to a veterinary clinic where they’re spayed or neutered and vaccinated. While under the anesthesia, a small tip of one of their ears is taken off to identify that they’re part of a managed cat colony. Then they’re returned to the area from which they came where caregivers continue to feed and watch over them. Spaying and neutering takes care of all the nuisances associated with unaltered cats.

Best Friends is launching a Las Vegas chapter of its Focus on Felines campaign and hopes more Las Vegas residents will get involved in helping the city’s feral and stray cats ― or “community cats.” Best Friends will hold a free workshop for feral cat caregivers and others interested in learning how to help community cats from 1 to 3 p.m., Sept. 5, inside the Findlay Chevrolet Community Room at 6800 S. Torrey Pines Dr., in Las Vegas.

Among other things, the workshop will cover:

• The basics of TNR
  
• Understanding relocation
  
• Working with your neighbors on nuisance concerns
  
• Working with your local vets
  
• Working with your local government and animal control

To learn more, e-mail Kotter at shellyk@bestfriends.org.

Read more about Best Friends’ Focus on Felines campaign.

Photos by Molly Wald, Best Friends’ photographer.

[LINK: Best Friends Animal Society; TOP PHOTO: icanhascheezburger.com]

Don’t forget! You can leave a comment on this post for an entry in The Cat’s Meow’s giveaway of a custom oil painting of your cat by Linden Alley.

If you live in the Chicago area and are feeling the pinch during the current financial crisis, check out the following low-cost recession-busting options for cat care:

• LOW-COST RABIES SHOTS: Cook County will hold a series of community clinics to vaccinate animals for rabies at a discounted rate starting in June. A one-year vaccination will cost $7, and a three-year shot will cost $21. Microchips that trace a pet to its owner can also be inserted for $10. Visit the Cook County Department of Animal and Rabies Control Web site for dates and locations.
• LOW-COST MICROCHIP: Cook County will hold a series of community clinics at which microchips that trace a pet to its owner can also be inserted for $10. Visit the Cook County Department of Animal and Rabies Control Web site for dates and locations.
• LOW-COST VACCINATIONS: At the Banfield Animal Hospital located in PetSmart in Skokie, healthy pets can receive $15 to $35 vaccinations after seeing a veterinarian for free on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 2 to 4 p.m. The mandatory vet visit normally costs $35 alone.
• LOW-COST SPAY/NEUTER: Many area clinics and shelters offer low-cost spay and neuter services, including the Anti-Cruelty Society’s Spay/Neuter Clinic and PAWS Chicago’s Lurie Clinic. At these facilities, fixing your cat costs between $10 and $30, while the service for dogs costs between $60 and $75.
• FREE PET FOOD: On the third Thursday of every month, people with proof of unemployment, public aid disability or social security aid can receive free pet food from the Animal Welfare League at 6224 S. Wabash Ave. Families in need can also visit the Pooch Pantry at B.C Dog Training Club in Mundelein on Saturdays from 9 a.m.-noon and Wednesdays from 1-4 p.m.

[PHOTO CREDIT: SkyscraperLife.com]

In Eugene, Oregon, members of Lane County Veterinary Medical Association will donate their labor to spay and neuter 500 feral cats this year. Plans are to sterilize 10 to 15 cats weekly at the Greenhill Humane Society, with the shelter, the city and Lane County Animal Services supporting the efforts.

“As we head into spring, spaying and neutering is a critical part of limiting unwanted pets in our community and ultimately reducing the number of homeless animals that enter our shelter,” said Tom Howard, supervisor for Lane County Animal Services. “We recognize that feral cats play a significant part in pet overpopulation.”

Volunteers will place traps near large feral cat colonies, capture them and bring them in for sterilization. Sterilized cats have their ears notched to indicate that they’ve been altered, and are returned to their capture site.

To learn more about feral cats, visit The Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon.

In Georgia, the Athens Area Humane Society will stop accepting feral cats next year, and local officials may turn to Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) to manage the thousands of wild cats that roam the city.

The society has a philosophical difference with the county with respect to the way in which they deal with feral cats. Executive Director Crystal Evans feels that keeping unadoptable feral cats — wild animals — in cages for a week before killing them is cruel and futile. “We would argue, for a truly feral animal, that’s inhumane,” she said. “These are cats that have had basically no human contact, so basically what you’re doing is scaring them to death for seven days and then killing them.”

Evans explains that the approximately 120 aggressive feral cats taken to the humane society each year occupy space that could be used for adoptable pets, forcing more cats to be euthanized and upsetting donors. They’re also a danger to employees, she adds.

This philosophical difference conflicts with the way in which the city of Athens would like the feral situation to be addressed, so the society is backing out of its $100,000 annual contract with the county.

Athens-Clarke officials now have a year to figure out how to control the feral cat population, estimated at 8,000 to 20,000.
They might turn to an organization like the Campus Cats, a volunteer group that traps feral cats, spays/neuters them, vaccinates them and returns them to the area in which they were trapped. Currently, TNR is illegal in Clarke County, but not on University of Georgia-owned land. Advocates are lobbying county commissioners to change the local law to permit it.

More and more local governments are allowing TNR, and a few, such as Jacksonville, Fla., are turning over feral cat management to TNR groups.

Legalizing TNR could be an uphill battle. TNR is not without its detractors and for every cat lover who feels that TNR is a humane practice that should be a legal alternative to trap-and-kill, another will argue that TNR does nothing to reduce feral populations and disrupts the environment.

TNR should be legal but not the sole means of managing feral cats, Athens-Clarke Commissioner Kelly Girtz says. “I don’t think anybody thinks of it as the silver bullet, the be-all end-all. It’s something that’s useful, but not in all circumstances.”

“The simple fact is neither is a perfect solution, but what we want to happen is for individuals to be able to choose,” Evans says.

[PHOTO CREDIT: David Manning, OnlineAthens]

Imagine enjoying a beautiful bike ride in glorious Spring weather and coming across a foreclosed home in which you learn that nearly 60 cats were abandoned without food or water?

If you’re Gail Silver with Silver Bells Rescue in Ohio, you mobilize immediately and do what needs to be done to keep those cats from being picked up by animal control and immediately euthanized. That included getting other rescue groups involved.

Lynne Heldman with Save Our Strays (SOS) immediately assisted by placing the easiest cats to catch, as well as trapping the cats that had the most urgent medical issues. Janet Corbett with Wildwood Pet Network interviewed potential fosters and adopters. Anita Barron with Pet Alliance worked to find fosters, resources and funding for this very large and expensive initiative.

In cooperation with the Cincinnati SPCA, several veterinary hospitals offered discounted services; Fannie Mae, the lender that owned the house also assisted; neighbors who live on the block where the cats were found came to their aid; fosters and other volunteers who heard the story showed up to help, nearly 60 cats were rescued or accounted for, including six cats and kittens who did not survive. Many of the rescued cats required extensive veterinary services to bring them back to health. Click here to read more about the rescue.

A group of artists from around the country created original art from images of the foreclosure cats and donated their work to raise money to fund the rescue efforts through the Foreclosure Cats Art Project. The work is dazzling, and although the originals have been  successfully auctioned, you can purchase a calendar and other products with the images through the Foreclosure Cats Online Store.

The Foreclosure Cats Art Project was so successful that it spawned another rescue effort of a feral colony in an abandoned factory. The Factory Cats Project is raising money for TNR efforts at the abandoned factory, which also includes fostering, socializing and adopting out adoptable cats within that colony.

If you live in Ohio and can provide a home to one of the five remaining foreclosure cats or one of the factory cats, click one of the links below. Don’t live in Ohio? You can help by making a donation on the site or buying from their online store.

• Adopt a Foreclosure Cat
• Adopt a Factory Cat
• Foreclosure Cats website
• Foreclosure Cats Art Project  
• Foreclosure Cats Online Store
• The Factory Cats Project

According to the Spay Day USA Web site, it’s estimated that one pair of cats producing two litters a year can have more than 2,000 descendants in four years — and more than 2 million by the end of eight. Spay/neuter is the only permanent, 100-percent effective method of birth control for dogs and cats and a proven way to reduce the vast numbers of animals who are born only to die prematurely and without a family who loves them.

According to Vicki Stevens, Spay Day USA national coordinator for HSUS, since the 1970s, when educational programs and affordable spay-neuter programs started to become widespread, euthanasia figures have gone down from 22 percent of the companion animal population in 1973 to about 3 percent now.

Spay Day events around the country are providing low-cost opportunities to spay and neuter your pets. Click here to find a Spay Day event in your area.

Here’s a sample of some Spay Day and Spay/Neuter Activities:

• Spay Day Photo Contest (online: ends Feb 27th)
  
• Etsy for Animals: Artists are offering Spay Day specials and discounts
  
• Free neutering event in Asheville, NC on Feb 27th.
  
• Trim-a-Tom $5 neutering for Harrison County Texas residents
  
• $10 spays/ $5 neuters for Ingham County, Michigan residents on April 26th
  
• Redwood Animal Hospital in Redwood City, CA is offering FREE spay/neuters on a first-come, first-served basis on Feb 24th. Call (650) 366-4180 for details.
  
• Salina, Kansas residents can get $25-off spay/neuter coupons from the Salina Animal Shelter. Must use before April 24th.

Still not convinced? Read the top ten myths about spaying and neutering, or
click here to learn more about why you should spay or neuter your pet.

Can’t afford it? Click here for a list of low cost and free spay/neuter clinics in the U.S.

If you live in Indiana and your tom hasn’t yet had his hoohaectomy, check out Fort Wayne’s Spay Day event: Neuter for a Nickel.

You can bring in up to seven male cats (they must be older than 8 weeks), and after a snip-snip here and a snip-snip there, they’ll be companionable neuters and you’ll have saved hundreds — even thousands — of cats from uncertain futures as feral cats. Click here for more information on the program.

Donald Bloom climbs a little hill in the Riparian Preserve Water Ranch, dragging a cart of food on squeaky wheels. “Sawyer!” he calls out. “Freckles! Ginseng!” As he parks the cart beneath a mesquite tree in the embankment and takes out the food, a dozen cats of all hues and temperaments scamper toward him from the undergrowth.

They could well be his pets, but they are mostly abandoned domestic cats dumped by their owners in the Gilbert preserve.

“People have been releasing animals in the preserve – it’s a major problem,” Bloom said. “The cats are pretty friendly, but the feral cats take a longer time to be domesticated.”

The animals are as much the victims of the economy as their onetime human masters. Foreclosures and job losses are prompting many people to abandon the cats in the preserve, especially with shelters filled to the brim.

They’re also dumping other domesticated creatures, including geese, ducks, roosters, tortoises, rabbits, doves, even goldfish.

It’s a tough situation. Desert Rivers Audubon claims the cats kill an average of two birds per day (this seems extraordinarily high to me) and are destroying the habitat. Bird lovers want the cats removed.

But removal means almost certain death. The Arizona Humane Society refuses to take the cats. An alternative is to trap and remove them to the county (Maricopa County Animal Care and Control) which will euthanize them or “arrange adoption according to the temperament of the cat.” In a shelter with limited resources, adoption is extremely unlikely.

Meanwhile, Bloom is convinced that his population stabilizing program, recommended by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, is the best way to help both the cats and birds.

The daily feeding keeps the territorial cats in one area of the 110-acre preserve, and helps keep them domesticated. Only newborn kittens are feral.

“Cats will stay in and not expend energy if they have food coming to them,” he said.

Funds are low for the group and volunteers are scarce. But Bloom plods on.

“I’m trying to undo the injustice to these animals,” he said. “I’m trying to give them a second chance at life because domesticated animals belong with humans.”

Mr Bloom, thank you for your dedication. We hope bird and cat lovers can reach accord soon.

Read the entire article here.