Did you know that each city in our county and some individual cites pay upwards of $90 in your taxes per feral cat to put them to sleep? We pay to kill cats...and dogs! That does not include police and animal control time and work. And not just the feral ones. The feral ones just get the needle sooner.
Most, if not all, of the food that is consumed by the pets in "the pound" is donated. Litter, sheets, towels too. Most of the hands on work with these pets is by volunteers. Yes, our county has more then its fair share of feral cats, or free-roaming cats. Not all of them are feral, yet. They are the cat someone left when they moved and never did get around to having it spayed or neutered.
Think of it this way: If each of us threw out just out piece of paper, lets say, at our own city hall, what a mess that would be. Now if each piece of paper -- just one from each resident -- was torn into four pieces, and so, we'd have a situation on our hands. We'd ban littering. We'd fine people who did it.
Mayors and lawmakers would be out there keeping the trash at bay. Same thing with cats, except we do not prosecute people who abandon or neglect their pets.
No one wants to take their pet to "the pound' as it is a near certain death sentence. And we'd feel pretty bad knowing we adopted 'Buffy', with the promise to care for, shelter and feed her until her death and now we are backing out of that promise.
We didn't spay or neuter "Buffy" because it cost too much or I didn't have time. But then we moved, we lost our job, something else came up. I'll just let her outside and she'll fend for herself. She's just one .She'll fade into the background.
Some of these cats that are thrown out make it and they reproduce. Like crazy. They aren't whores and sluts, it is their instinct to reproduce.
So now one persons one problem has quickly become six or eight problems. And that one person walked away never having to answer to the problems he's caused.
He's not fending for food, nor being terrified of the beings that once loved them so much. There is sometimes a kind and generous human or two who take on the responsibility to go out everyday, rain or shine and bring some food to the cats.
Their hearts hurt for these abandoned domesticated beings so they do what they can to help the cats from starving. That is the easy part. The hard part, the responsible part, is trapping the cats to get them neutered or spayed so they can not reproduce, test them for disease and get them shots to prevent diseases.
There are organizations in our community to help with that. The program is called Trap Neuter Return or TNR for short.
Depending on where you live you can have the surgery and vaccinations done for $0 to $50 per cat. Yes, it can add up, but it sure as heck is cheaper then killing them.TNR is an all volunteer force. The trappers make no money, the vets make no money, the cost is to defray the cost of anesthesia and the shots. The rest is made up by donations and fund drives.
It's work. But it does work.
In cat colonies all over our county that are TNR-ed the numbers of cats are dwindling. Cat colonies where trap and kill is the preferred method have numbers that continue to rise.
We kill over 21,000 animals in Volusia County annually at an average cost of $90 per animal so that is almost $2 million taxpayer dollars thrown away when there is a solution to the feral/abandoned cat problem .
There is a study that the County did for their proposed TNR program found that there are approximately 80,000 free-roaming cats in Volusia County.
State Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, is pitching the additional funding for spay and neuter that would come from animal control departments fines. He actually said that we kill 200,000 dogs and cats each year in Florida at a cost of between $80 and $120 million in taxpayer dollars and that we could cut that in half with an aggressive state-wide spay and neuter program. Most of us have seen the cute cats at Wendy's or behind Denny's.
They are free roaming, feral. They are untouchable. They hang out in groups as it's safer that way. They sleep together, play together and eat together. These are cat colonies.
I have been working with these type of cats for a while. I have done my homework and I have worked out in the field feeding, trapping, vetting , re cooping the cats and I volunteer at vet offices that have low cost spay and neuter programs. It's also work.
Sometimes we trap kittens that are young enough to socialize and adopt out. The adoption fee barely covers the spay and neuter costs. Never mind the vet visits because these little ones often get sick, fleas, Upper respiratory infections and the like.
We pay for that out of our own pockets just to see them go to good homes.And we never adopt out unless the pet is spayed or neutered or we have a appointment for the pet to be spayed or neutered when old enough.
Our old-school way was to trap the cats, taking them to "the pound" and have them put a needle in them to kill them. In Port Orange that cost $93 in tax dollars per cat.
So, if we take in all 40 of the cats that live by the Seven/11, lets say..Over $3,700 paid with our tax dollars to kill. Problem solved! Right? Wrong!
If you remove all the cats you know what happens with in about 30 days?
Cats that have been run out of other colonies come in and take their place. And don't forget, someone is going to think that is a perfect spot for Fluffy the cat to be dumped. Before you know it you'll have 60 cats that are reproducing. It's called "The Vacuum Effect".
If an area has no feral cats to defend the area, more will come, and so will the rodents. Meanwhile, had the cats been TNR'ed at even $50 each, that is a savings of our tax dollars of over $2,000! And no one has to die!
In cities around the globe to our back yard, TNR has been put to the test and has passed over and over again. Ponce Inlet had 20-something cats TNR-ed. In two years' time they are down to three. And there are similar stories. We need mandatory spay and neuter laws in our county. And we need the county to free up the funds they allocate to kill cats to be used for TNR instead.
Immediately we will see less of our tax dollars going to kill abandoned pets and more money left in city and county budgets for other things.
And we need to prosecute people who abandon their pets and make it our problem.
The County, Ormond Beach, South Daytona, Ponce Inlet, DeLand and Holly Hill are all on board with mandatory spay and neuter and TNR, but the rest of them need to change how they do business. New Smyrna Beach and Edgewater seem to have killing high on their list and saving taxpayers money low on the list when it comes to animal control.
I'll end this by mentioning the moral dilemma in all of this. Killing the cats is just wrong. Compassion for animals is far down on most politicians' list of things to do. The exception is the majority on the County Council. They have made great strides in the steps needed to become a "No Kill Community." Several people on the council are great animal advocates and you cannot get better than Becky Wilson who is in charge of Volusia County Animal Control. Find out where your city stands on this issue and let them know that TNR is the way to go.
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