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Earlier this month I started getting emails from animal lovers saying, “Did you know that the Oakland city shelter is going to start euthanizing dogs because they’re running out of room?” So I checked it out and called Joe DeVries, the new director of Oakland Animal Services. Relax, folks. No one’s going to be killing anything.
“We had a huge influx of dogs at the beginning of the year. We had 105 dogs come through in 12 days, and we were well over capacity, particularly for big dogs,” he explained. “Our shelter capacity is about 65, and we were about 90, and that doesn’t even include the dogs we have in our foster program.
“So our social media team put out an urgent call-out saying we had a number of dogs facing instant euthanasia if we didn’t get our numbers under control,” DeVries said. “Two local news stations picked up the story, and that led to an amazing adoption weekend! We adopted out 39 dogs and also had 27 transferred to rescue organizations, and that brought us back down to a safe level so none of these dogs are at risk now.
“We still have 60 big dogs in our shelter who still need a home and 80 more dogs in foster care that also need a home. We want to thank Oakland for coming through and encourage people to keep looking to us if they need a dog. All the dogs we offer have been vaccinated and spayed or neutered, and our adoption fees are extremely low, just $20 out the door.”
That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s almost springtime, and you know what that means: kitten season. All unspayed female cats are pregnant or about to be. This includes the outdoor stray or feral you are feeding and your own female house cat who sometimes goes outside. It will continue through summer and fall.
The gestation period is nine weeks, so you may start seeing babies any time now. If you don’t see kittens, don’t assume there aren’t any out there. They will leave the nest and follow Mom when they’re about six weeks old.
However, help is a phone call away. Search online for “cat rescue groups” or “low cost spay/neuter,” followed by the name of your city, or call your local animal shelter or rescue group. Call more than one group, and call more than once. Most only ask for a small donation. It’s so much easier and more economical to spay one cat, as opposed to an entire litter of up to six.
So why bother? Because for every kitten not born, that’s one more cat not in danger of being euthanized at a shelter — not to mention the hunger, diseases, starvation and accidents that befall homeless cats. Be on the lookout for any cat you’re feeding or happen to see.
Do the right thing and make that call. If you own a cat that you can’t keep, please don’t think you’re doing it a favor by dumping it in a nearby cat colony to save it from being euthanized in a shelter. For one thing, responsible shelters move heaven and earth to avoid euthanasia. Oakland Animal Services, for instance, has one of the lowest euthanasia rates in the state. For online information, visit oaklandanimalservices.org/adopt.
For another, studies show that the maximum life span for a homeless cat is two years, tops, and it’s even shorter for former house cats that suddenly find themselves outside, where they are easy prey for hawks, owls, falcons, coyotes and the most dangerous animal of all — us.
That accords with my own experience feeding the ferals in my neighborhood. I started out with four, but as word got out that there was a soft touch living on my block (me), it soon mushroomed to two dozen. Then they started disappearing one-by-one until they were all gone. That’s the reason why I never let my cat Betty go outside, much as she’d love to.
Finally, in much happier news, let me add my voice to all those who are still dazzled by watching the East Bay’s own Alysa Liu win figure skating gold at the Winter Olympics. Boy, did we need that! Her strength, daring, artistry and sheer joy almost make up for Oaktown losing the A’s, Raiders and Warriors. To quote my former editor Craig Lazzaretti, “We should throw her a parade around Lake Merritt and end this fairy tale at Fairyland!”
Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.
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Martin Snapp
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