M-Live.com recently posted an announcement for Spay Neuter Express -- a series of free cat spay/neuter clinics for lower-income families living in Kent County Michigan. We were pleased because we know from our own experience, how key sterilization is to keeping cats in their homes. It’s only a matter of time before the spraying, yowling and kittening behaviors of intact cats become too much for a family to handle and – in homes that don’t have the money to get them fixed – the only way out is often to take them to animal control shelters that kill them or leave them outdoors (often pregnant) to live on their own – creating more feral cat colonies.It dismayed us to read the response M-Live posted to this good news. It came from “Bleeper” who replied: “I mean if you’re low income, do you really need the added expense of pet ownership?” The answer is, “Yes you do”. The value of cat companionship is well documented. Cat companionship lowers our blood pressure, relieves our stress, reduces human health care costs, and helps fight depression – by giving us unconditional love and attention. And, in these troubled economic times, what could be more beneficial than that – to everyone – rich and poor?
Many nonprofits provide “low-cost spay/neuter” to those that can’t (or won’t) pay the prices charged by private veterinary clinics. Which, depending on the clinic, can run anywhere from $100 to $350 per cat. Not because it costs that much to sterilize them, but because the clinics include a grocery list of required additional services as part of sterilization. This often puts the cost out-of-reach for many budget-minded families – and for them, low-cost spay/neuter programs fill a gap.
But to true lower-income families – which our program defines as households with annual incomes under $40,000 per year -- even low-cost spay/neuter is unrealistic. We learned that lesson this winter when we began charging a $25 fee for our previously-free spay/neuter vouchers. We watched our application rate plummet. We had purposely set the fees lower than any other program in our area and never considered that $25 would be an obstacle –especially since it not only covered the cost to fix the cat but also to vaccinate them once for rabies and distemper. Needless to say, we’ve gone back to providing free vouchers and the program interest is building up again. Most of the applications we receive are from households relying on social security disability or retirement income, college students, or single-parent families with small children receiving food stamps.
It’s wrong to equate inability to pay to fix a pet cat with inability to provide care for the cat. Coming up with $100-$350 all at once for the clinic is not the same as adding a bag of cat food to your grocery cart. The 2007-8 American Pet Products Assocation Pet Survey estimates the average weekly cost of having a pet cat – including food, boarding fees, routine veterinary care, grooming, vitamins, treats and toys --is $12. Just providing food and giving up the luxuries of cat care, the cost drops to $3.50 – which even a family on a tight budget can handle.
Even if we believed Bleeper's theory that lower-income families shouldn't have cats because they can't afford to fix them, how would we stop them from getting them? Free kittens are available everywhere – largely because we lack community-wide spay/neuter support. When one unfixed cat gets to be too much hassle, give the cat up and get a new free kitten. If we could simply stop this cycle by providing free cat sterilization to these households, the kitten rate would drop and we would be a giant step closer to being a no kill community. Preventing kittens from being born is a whole lot more humane than killing those we breed in excess – intentionally or not.
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