By RODD CAYTON The Daily News |
BULLHEAD CITY — A group of animal advocates is taking a proactive approach to controlling Bullhead City’s feral cat population. The recent Big Community Cat Fix brought together volunteers who set traps for cats in known “colonies” around the city. They were ferried to Kingman’s Low Cost Spay/Neuter Clinic for sterilization, then brought back to their colonies and released.
Rebecca Seefeld is the founder of We Care for Animals, which worked with the clinic and the city’s animal care and welfare bureau on the project. She said that the goal is to “humanely lower the population of community cats.”
Seefeld said she’s hoping the term “community cats” will replace “feral cats” in the community. She said calling them “community cats” more properly reflects the felines’ place in the hearts of the two-legged population.
“They have caregivers who want them back,” she said. “We just don’t want them to reproduce.”
Hence the trap-neuter-return plan.
About 75 cats were trapped in the recent action and taken to the clinic.
Seefeld said that all the cats were fixed and vaccinated, and some were treated for medical issues.
The plan was for any cats with untreatable conditions that compromised their quality of life to be humanely euthanized.
The traps are spring-loaded metal cages with food at one end. When a cat walks in, it steps on a plate that closes a door. Each trap also contains water and litter, and is set up to allow a human to replace them as needed.
The cats’ ears are tipped, so any caretakers or trap minders will know they have been trapped, neutered and returned
The animal care and welfare bureau provided transportation, putting the cats in two large air-conditioned vans.
Seefeld said she traps about three cats a week for sterilization, and that the Big Community Cat Fix March was planned to get ahead of spring litters; she said kittens are usually born between April and October.
Animal Care & Welfare Manager Bradley Oliver said the event is important because it’s a start in “helping to fix a tremendous feral cat problem,” by slowing population growth.
He said that We Care for Animals and other volunteers did a great job with the roundup, bringing in more feral cats in from the overnight trapping than the shelter might see in two months.
He said the bureau is building relationships with local animal groups to try to keep the population of unwanted pets under control.
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