Shelter seeks aide in neutering effort

Bus to travel parish to target stray cats

Sunday, December 05, 2004

By Sandra Barbier

St. Bernard/Plaquemines bureau

The big, colorful bus with all the dogs and cats painted on it could become a familiar sight in some St. Bernard Parish neighborhoods.

Friends of the Animal Shelter of St. Bernard would like to take the bus, a fully equipped spay-neuter clinic that belongs to the Louisiana SPCA, into neighborhoods where stray cats abound.

"There are people who don't want to bring animals in (to the shelter), or who have several cats in the neighborhood" that they'd like to help, said Friends member Sonja Aiston, coordinator of the Operation CatSnip program.

By taking the clinic, the Dorothy Dorsett Brown Mobile Center, into neighborhoods, volunteers and shelter officials said they will make neutering and spaying pets as easy as possible for owners. They also can assist residents and business owners who want to have stray cats neutered, Aiston said.

Operation CatSnip focuses on cats because the number of stray and abandoned cats in St. Bernard Parish has increased in recent years.

"We were tracking our trend," St. Bernard Parish Animal Shelter director Ceily Trog said. "We realized that for the last seven years, dog numbers were going down," but the number of cats at the shelter has been climbing for the past three years after four years of declines, Trog said.

Pet owners are more willing to take their dogs to a clinic for neutering and spaying, she said, while many cats are "neighborhood cats" that no one considers to be a pet or are feral cats that avoid humans.

By neutering those cats, they will stop reproducing unwanted kittens, Trog said.

"As long as they're not having babies, they're usually not a nuisance. They're not breeding, spraying and caterwauling," she said.

And because cats are territorial, allowing the neutered animals to remain in the area will discourage other cats from moving in, and the neighborhood cats can continue to keep down rodent populations, Trog said.

The Friends organization is seeking volunteers to help with the neighborhood visits by the mobile clinic and to help capture and temporarily hold stray cats to be neutered, Aiston said.

The group has both humane traps and holding cages that it will loan to volunteers. Cats are harmlessly caught one at a time in the traps and can be transferred to the holding cage by connecting the two cages and opening their doors, Trog said.

Volunteers also are needed to put up fliers in neighborhoods to boost participation in the mobile clinic's visit, Aiston said. Each mobile clinic visit costs $800 and is financed by the Joseph and Arlene Meraux Charitable Foundation, other donations and fees.

"We don't want to go in a neighborhood and invest resources and no one comes," Aiston said.

Volunteers are needed to assist the mobile clinic's staff on surgery day, to check in the animals as owners drop them off in the morning, to fill out animals' vaccination history and to get other information, Trog said.

If a cat hasn't been vaccinated, then it will be vaccinated that day for a $10 charge. That's the most any client will be required to pay, Trog said.

"We ask for a donation (to pay for the surgery), but no one will be refused" if they don't pay, she said. Donations will be used to pay for more neutering and spaying services, she said.

To volunteer for the CatSnip program, contact the shelter at 278-1535 or Aiston at 276-1813.

Sandra Barbier can be reached at sbarbier@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3836.