Is It Really Raining Cats and Dogs?

If you believe the statistics published by many animal organizations, yes.  For example, PETA’s web site states that in “…seven years one female cat and her offspring can produce an incredible 370,000 kittens” And …”Just one unaltered female dog and her offspring can produce 67,000 puppies in only six years”.     Although these numbers may add up on paper, Mother Nature sees to it that they never play out in real life – for if they were even close to being accurate, our streets would be so full of cats and dogs that we wouldn't be able to walk down the sidewalk without tripping over them.  And that simply isn't the case.

No one really knows how many cats and dogs there are – but the pet owner marketing surveys published by APPA (American Pet Product Producers Association) may shed some light.  They estimate there are about 164 million cats and 78 million dogs living in American homes.  Annual adoptions into this population include about 12 million cats and 11 million dogs.  Un-owned cats living outdoors in feral cat colonies add to the total cat population –but again how many there are is unknown.  Estimates run as high as one feral cat for every owned cat.  Yet as we've seen through our spay/neuter program – the line is blurry between the two groups and many “yard cats” may be double-counted.

Of the 12 million cats adopted out each year, only 500,000 are purebred cats purchased from breeders, and 2.5 million come from animal shelter adoptions.  The overwhelming majority –9 million-- are cats that are literally found outdoors (feral, lost or abandoned) or born to someone’s pet cat – and then kept or given to someone else through a free cat ad or networking person-to-person with friends, relatives and coworkers.

APPA doesn't distinguish, but we assume the majority of adoptions are kittens and puppies – with most of the balance being young adults – often abandoned or relinquished from homes that can’t afford to fix them.   For – once pets become sexually mature, they become increasingly challenging to care for – even for the most loving guardians.   Only 12% (or 20 million) of owned cats are left intact – not because their guardians don’t understand the importance of fixing them, but simply because they lack the front-end money to do so.  Scare tactic population statistics aren't needed to drive home this point – all you have to do is live with one to understand. 

    

So why does PETA and many other otherwise responsible animal organizations perpetuate these grossly misleading statistics?  Perhaps they think that this is the best way to show the importance of spaying and neutering cats or that it’s the best way to justify the use of healthy cat euthanasia to manage shelter occupancy rates – for according to the HSUS, 2.5 million cats and kittens are put down prematurely in shelters annually – rough half of their total admissions.    Whatever their reason, the result is a distorted picture of the number of cats – one that may be more hurtful to them than helpful.

Introducing Acute Veterinary Care for Cats

A few weeks ago a Santa Fe woman called us about Spook -- her 8-year old male cat.  He just wasn’t acting right and she wanted to get him to a vet to find out why.  But raising two grandchildren on an income of only $15,000 per year made that next to impossible.  The first clinic she called quoted $150 just to walk in the door and then more depending on what treatments he needed.  The second clinic quoted less but they couldn’t see him until the next day.  I could tell by the somberness in her voice that she felt he needed attention sooner rather than later.   She hesitated to call a third clinic because by now she knew the cost of diagnosing and treating Spook at any clinic was way outside her budget.  Then a friend of hers suggested calling us for financial assistance.

Normally we would have declined to help because our focus has been exclusively on cat sterilization.  But something about this call hit a chord.  And -- if our goal in sterilizing lower-income pet cats is to keep them in their original homes – would it be stretching it too much if we added acute medical emergencies to our program?    After all – if a cat’s guardian can’t afford to sterilize their cat, how are they going to pay for a medical emergency?  And – without prompt professional attention– the cat may suffer unnecessarily – or may even die prematurely.  Considering this we suggested Spook’s guardian take him to a third clinic and ask the vet to provide us with a diagnosis and estimate of treatment costs.  If the long-range prognosis for the cat was good, we may be able to pay the costs to treat his emergency.

Lucky for Spook she got him to a clinic that afternoon.  His urinary tract was blocked and if that had not been corrected immediately he may have died.  Fortunately after a brief hospitalization with lots of fluid therapy he was ready to go home again and pick up life where he left off – with no serious damage to his health.  Don’t you just love a happy ending?

We do.  So now we’ve formulated Spook’s situation into a new Foundation program called Acute Veterinary Care Assistance.  Services covered are the necessary costs to treat an otherwise-healthy cat for an acute and curable health problem.  It serves as a last-resort option for cat caregivers in our service area who are unable to pay for the treatments themselves and cannot qualify for traditional funding through existing financing programs such as Care Credit.

The best news is that it won’t take any funding from our free cat spay/neuter program because we’re funding it with the money we previously allocated for feline veterinary scholarships – a program we put on hold during the 2009 financial meltdown.   With our last scholarship recipient graduating this year, it was time to open the program to new applicants or reallocate the money to something else.  As much as we liked sponsoring new feline veterinarians, we believe funding acute veterinary care is more in line with our mission –channeling the money directly to otherwise healthy cats in need of emergency care.

For just as we believe that no cat should have to lose a good home because their caregiver can’t afford to get them fixed, we also believe no cat should have to suffer or die because their guardian can’t afford to pay for urgent care.    For complete program information on this and all our programs, visit our web site, Zimmer-Foundation.org.