Alum Works to Counter Pet Overpopulation

The little cat surely didn`t know what hit her. And she most certainly would not have liked anything that happened during her anesthesia-induced nap - especially being tied spread-eagle on a stainless-steel operating table. She looked silly, and, as everyone knows, cats prefer dignified poses. But that was the price the gray striped female paid to be Cat No. 1 of the untold numbers that will be spayed or neutered in PetFix Northeast Ohio`s mobile clinic. The unit - a van emblazoned with the motto "Fix`m Now!" - visited Elyria`s Friendship Animal Protective League in late December, the first of a handful of shakedown trips. Beginning in January, the clinic will travel Northeast Ohio two days a week, 50 weeks a year, and perform surgery on an average of about 25 cats a day. In time, the clinic will operate four days a week. PetFix`s mission is to help end pet overpopulation by making spay-neuter surgeries accessible and affordable to the low-income population. The cost is $20 for male cats and $30 for female cats, compared to the average going rate of $75 for males and $195 for females. When the clinic gears up to deal with dogs, neuters will cost $30 and spays $45. It will require all pets to have rabies vaccinations, at $6. "The word on the street is that 80 percent of cat overpopulation originates from 20 percent of the population," PetFix president Timy Sullivan said. She founded the nonprofit group and spearheaded its funding. "We have to solve the population problem, not just build shelters. You can`t make a shelter big enough to house unwanted cats." According to the American Humane Association, she said, if a female cat and her offspring were allowed to reproduce unabated for seven years, 434,000 kittens would be born. PetFix promotes early surgery, at 2 pounds or 2 months old, because cats can begin to reproduce at 4 months, and dogs, at 6 months. Neither cats nor dogs recognize kinship when the breeding instinct emerges. Which brings us back to the 19 cats that became part of the solution to cat overpopulation that frigid December day. They were dropped off in the early morning so they could recover from the anesthesia by pickup time in late afternoon - relieved of the tyranny of their hormones, freed from the reproductive cycle. For the record, Cat No. 1 was a pushover in the practiced hands of vet technician Anne Marie Bentkowski and animal technician Ron Carlton, who also drives the van. Their job is to transform the cats from confused pets into compliant patients. First, Cat 1 was removed from her carrier, outfitted with an identification collar and weighed to compute her dose of anesthesia. When veterinarian Megan Barrett Volpe playfully called out, "Knock `em down," Bentkowski anesthetized the cat, shaved its tummy and carried it to the operating table in the back of the van. She quickly strapped it spread-eagled upon the towel and draped its body with a disposable cover that opened over the sterile surgical area. Then Barrett Volpe moved in and began working to a chorus of meows emanating from other cats awaiting surgery - not the Josh Groban recording she prefers. "I forgot my CD," she said. She deftly cut through the cat`s abdominal wall to access and remove its uterus and ovaries, before carefully suturing the skin and muscles back together. The whole process took about 15 minutes, compared with two minutes for male cats. Then she unstrapped the cat from the table and vaccinated it against rabies. Barrett Volpe flipped the sides of the towel around the sleeping cat and carried her like a baby to a holding cage along a wall of the van. "She`s done! She`s a burrito!" she crooned as she gently laid the cat in a holding cage to recuperate. "Knock `em down," she called out again, musing, "You have to be fairly insane to do this for a living, the same thing over and over." The exciting possibility of preventin