Meet Cloud, below) a friendly community cat that was chosen to become the 250 000th feline spayed or neutered by the non-profit organization FixNation in Los Angeles.
FixNation provides free spay/neuter surgeries for community cats in Los Angeles, and low-cost spay/neuter services for companion cats, and has been doing so for more than two decades.
“Of those 250,000 cats, our efforts prevented each female from giving birth to multiple litters of kittens, as well as the generations of offspring that unneutered males would have fathered,” said FixNation executive director Karn Myers, who co-founded the nonprofit with her late husband Mark Dodge. “Over time, that adds up to a massive, mind-boggling number – millions of cats that otherwise would have been born and struggling to survive on the streets.
“Back in 1999, when we started out as an all-volunteer program, we ‘fixed’ a total of six cats our first day. Now we have our own clinic and often sterilize more than 100 cats a day, providing each kitty in our care with expert surgery, vaccines, pain meds, fluids, flea treatment and lots and lots of TLC.”
Despite the high demand for FixNation’s services – the clinic is on track to fix more than 17,000 community and companion cats in the near future. With a relentless stream of appointment requests, FixNation is grappling with major funding set-backs. One reason is the economy; another is that a number of donors are opting to fund foster and adoption programs instead of spay/neuter.
“It’s a frustrating situation, as the clear solution for the cat population boom is mass sterilization. There simply aren’t enough homes out there for all the kitties that need them. Los Angeles will never adopt its way out of this crisis,” Myers explained.
“Grants and private donations enabled us to fix 250,000 cats thus far, yet now – at a time when our services are needed more than ever – our funding has plummeted. Only with adequate funding will we be able to continue our compassionate mission using the most natural means of population control, sterilization, the only humane and effective alternative to mass euthanasia.“
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