Stray Cats Are Becoming An Epidemic In Our Region

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JAMESTOWN, NY (WNY News Now) — Leaving food out for the neighborhood strays or offering a pat on the head to these cats might seem like a good idea, but in reality isn’t helping these kitties at all. Luckily, there is something you can do to aid in the stray cat epidemic.

In the past year, the Chautauqua County Humane Society alone has helped hundreds of cats in our area with their trap, neuter, return program. However, staff at the humane society can’t do it alone.

“We’ve all seen the cats in the county, we’ve all seen the cats in Jamestown, we’ve seen the cats, like you said, not in great shape in different places so we want to make sure that we try to limit the amount of cats reproducing in our area and allow them to be healthy animals in our area,” said Humane Society Vet Tech Molly Loomis. “As for the trap, neuter, return program. We have that program set up for both within the city as well as in the county. We’ve done 626 cats last year so we made a huge impact with a lot of it but there is no funding for the program at this point.”

Stray cats are not only exposed to harsh and unforgiving elements, dangerous predators, and an unreliable source of food, they are also more susceptible to deadly diseases.

“It’s more than just feeding them, they require medical care too to make sure that they maintain good health and part of that is the spay and neuter because there is a lot of things that are going to come along if you’re not going to get them spayed and neutered,” explained Clinic Coordinator Amanda Sublett.

“There is F.I.P in our area, there is Leukemia in our area, there is Parvo which is the Panleukopenia in the cats, so there’s a lot of things that can be prevented if we get their gonads out,” said Loomis.

The staff at the humane society believe the best way to help is to take preventative measures.

“We don’t want them to reproduce because we already have an overpopulation problem so we don’t want to add to the problem, we want to fix it,” Sublett said.

The staff at the shelter invite anyone interested in taking action to call at (716) 665-2209 and register with their T.N.R program to be a part of the solution, most supplies needed will be provided by the shelter at no cost to volunteers.