New York City will pay for 3,500 cats to be spayed and neutered as part of a new pilot program in Brooklyn.
City lawmakers on Thursday approved $500,000 in funding to pay for cat spaying and neutering in an effort to address the city’s cat overpopulation and help low-income cat owners.
The money will be allocated to Flatbush Cats, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit focused on reducing the borough’s outdoor cat population. Pet owners and volunteers who trap and sterilize stray cats before returning them to where they were found are eligible.
Councilmember Justin Brannan, who led the effort, said it’s past time the city addressed the city’s feral cat overpopulation problem and envisions the program expanding in the future.
“I believe that the city is taking advantage, if not exploiting the compassion of animal lovers who reach into their own pockets to pay for this stuff that the city should be subsidizing,” he said. “We need to subsidize more, even if we don’t have Flatbush Cats in every neighborhood, we can subsidize veterinarians who are willing to do this work.”
The city-subsidized surgeries will be offered at Flatbush Cats’ nonprofit clinic, Flatbush Veterinary Clinic, which opened in 2023 to provide low-cost spaying and neutering. Flatbush Vet currently has the capacity to provide 7,000 appointments a year, charging between $100 and $200 depending on need, according to founder Will Zweigart.
He said affordable veterinary care is key to addressing the city’s shelter overcrowding by both helping financially burdened pet owners keep their animals and also working to reduce the feral cat population.
“We’re dealing with shelters that are beyond capacity, shutting down intake, no surrenders available,” he said. “This is the first time in this budget that the city council has allocated, say, a meaningful amount of money towards preventative efforts — things that would prevent more animals from showing up at shelters.”
Lizzie Falcon has been a trap-neuter-return volunteer since the peak of the pandemic in 2021 and quickly learned the limitations of veterinary care costs. She said she eventually turned to social media, amassing a following she turns to when fundraising for the cost of veterinary care for the cats she rescues. This year, she has raised $10,000 for around 60 cats.
“ I also feel like I’m a cat influencer online because it is how I pay for their care,” she said. “ I could spend every waking minute of my day trying to help cats in Brooklyn and still wouldn’t be able to help all of them. Um, the cats we see on the street are just even a small fraction.”
Falcon said the funding will lower the barrier of entry for other locals to get involved in rescuing cats.
“ If someone’s going out of their way to help a cat, but they find out it’s gonna cost them like $200, $300, it breaks my heart, but I can understand why people are like, ‘That’s asking too much of me,’” she said. “ I’m really excited that this makes it more affordable for other people to get involved, ’cause we need more people involved, the scale of the problem is so large. ”
Catalina Gonella
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