June is Adopt a Shelter Cat month
June is Adopt a Shelter Cat month. Shelters across the country are participating in this monthlong effort, during the height of kitten season, to find these cats homes.
“The dogs, God bless them, always come first. It’s nice for them to be focused and it gives the cats a chance, especially the adult cats, who seem to spend a long time in the shelters. It gives them a chance to get a home,” said Ann Woods, the director of Kittyland Cat and Kitten Rescue.
The rescue has already adopted out 21 cats, but they’re hoping that number will go up.
While most cities typically have one season in which the shelters are filled with kittens, the desert is different.
“Because it’s warm, our feral cat population goes through two, sometimes three, breeding seasons. So we, as opposed to other areas where they have cold weather, we breed all the time,” said Jana Hayes, who is on the board of the Palm Springs Animal Shelter.
That is a big reason why local animal organizations and shelters are ramping up trap-neuter-return or TNR, efforts.
“It is a program where we go out and trap feral cats, bring them into the shelter, have them spayed and neutered and then we return them to where they were trapped,” Hayes said.
The program seeks to lower the feral cat population in the valley, which Hayes estimates is around 30,000 cats.
“It’s humane. It works, because over the years within a colony, just through natural attrition, the number of community cats will go down. And another goal with spay and neuter is we control the kitten population,” Hayes said.
Making sure feral cats are fixed means fewer litters and fewer kittens in the shelters.
“Although we do take in a lot of kittens, it’s a drain on our resources and the ability to take care of them the way that we would like to,” Hayes said.
In the next four years, these shelters hope to make the desert a no-kill Coachella Valley. Until that time, adopting a shelter cat saves two lives because, when you take your new pet home, it opens up room for another cat to fill its space.
