Cats flood shelters as economy hits pets Strained owners and a burst of kittens tax Valley rescues. By Marc Benjamin / The Fresno Bee 06/08/08 22:58:19 Valley animal shelters are crawling with cats.
A struggling economy and an unusually fertile breeding season have combined to fill shelters with felines -- and the numbers are growing.
More than 300 kittens are at Fresno's Central California SPCA shelter, which is so full that cages are stacked on the floor, said Beth Caffrey, the SPCA's volunteer coordinator.
The math doesn't look promising: An average of 89 cats enter the shelter daily, but only 15 or 20 get adopted on a good day, Caffrey said. One day last week, only two were adopted, even when the shelter lowered prices. And more cats are being euthanized. With home foreclosures up and disposable incomes down, people are getting rid of pets, Caffrey said. Some drop their animals off at shelters, while others simply leave them behind when they move.
The mild winter just made matters worse, sparking an unusual second peak-breeding cycle, Caffrey said.
"It's an emergency situation," said Kelly Joos, director of development for Valley Animal Center in Fresno, which is holding about 260 cats. Joos said the shelter can't take many more.
This year's cat problem is far worse than in recent years, area shelter officials say. At Fresno's SPCA, 389 cats were turned in by their owners in May -- up more than 60% from May 2007.
Inside the SPCA lobby on a recent afternoon, 11 cats were dropped off within a matter of minutes. Becky Maldonado brought in a cat she thought was a male, until it had four kittens. She said she never suspected Ryan -- given to her by a neighbor -- was a girl.
Ahead of Maldonado, Eniqueta Vasquez was turning in five kittens and their Siamese mother. She said the cats were not hers but "were living behind my trailer."
Some of Valley Animal Center's cats are from the city of Clovis animal shelter, where Betty Cochran, shelter director, said owner turn-ins have "just exploded."
Clovis is receiving many feral cats and others with serious illnesses, she said.
"We have seen a ton of owner turn-ins with the housing market and the economy," she said. "People are saying they can't afford it, or they are moving into apartments and can't afford the deposits."
Cats are crowding Kings County's animal shelter, too. The agency is getting 20 to 30 a day, said Teri Rockhold, Kings County animal services manager.
Rockhold said her shelter has about 120 cats and has built outdoor holding areas for feral cats, which make up about 40% of the cats in the Hanford shelter.
The shelters and other agencies have networks of foster homes, but they need more. They also need more donations of cages and other supplies, as well as spay-and-neuter sponsors, officials say.
All of this is putting pressure on shelters to find other places to send the cats.
The SPCA gets some help from 60 families around Fresno who open their homes to the cats until they are adopted. The "foster homes" care for about 300 animals.
Lynea Lattanzio, who operates Cat House on the Kings near Reedley, also helps out. Last year, she accepted about 1,000 cats to ease the Fresno SPCA's burden. She then shipped many of those cats to rescues, foster homes and other agencies that need animals. "We try to take as many as we can," she said. "We then send them to rescues or the Bay Area until they are saturated."
Lattanzio also has a network of foster homes where about 400 cats have been sent.
"By June or July, we have almost burned out most of our fosters," she said.
The Fresno SPCA and other shelters also rely on animal shelters far away. Many animals go to shelters in Northern California, where residents have fewer animals to choose from because more animals are spayed and neutered there.
Officials in San Francisco have taken 126 dogs and cats from Valley shelters and others from Valley rescues like Cat House on the Kings, said Jan McHugh Smith, president of the San Francisco SPCA.
Carrie Harrington, a spokeswoman for Marin Humane Society, said her agency has taken 106 cats and dogs from shelters in Fresno, Visalia and Madera this year.
Bay Area spay and neuter programs have succeeded to a point where there are not enough animals to meet demand, she said. Marin representatives make trips to the Valley at least once a month.
Harrington said Marin Humane Society has partnerships with 40 agencies and rescue groups and transports 2,000 cats and dogs to their shelter each year.
"Many homeless animals still languish in crowded shelters in outlying areas where pets outnumber adopters," she said. "It only makes sense for us to save lives that are within our reach."
Linda Guthrie, president of Animal Rescue Fresno, a dog rescue, has taken cats from the SPCA to help out. In recent weeks, she said, they have adopted out 15 cats.
"I went walking through the shelter, and it was litter after litter after litter," Guthrie said.
"It was heartbreaking." The reporter can be reachedat
mbenjamin@fresnobee.comor (559) 441-6166.
[IMG]Cats flood shelters as economy hits pets Strained owners and a burst of kittens tax Valley rescues. By Marc Benjamin / The Fresno Bee 06/08/08 22:58:19 Valley animal shelters are crawling with cats.[/IMG]
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