A woman happily told me that she plans to get her cat spayed, but only after she has \u201cjust one litter,\u201d she said smiling. \u201cI want her to experience motherhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
I smiled back. \u201cThat\u2019s like saying every woman has to have a baby in order to be fulfilled as a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Some days I think my head is going to explode.)<\/p>\n
People really believe that it\u2019s cruel to not let pets mate and even crueler to not let female pets have at least one litter. They justify their claim by assigning pets human emotions, rather than realizing that it\u2019s an animal\u2019s instinct which guides mating behaviors. There is a difference between animal instinct and human behavior: one is uncontrollable; the other is very controllable\u2014at least it\u2019s supposed to be. However, if you spay or neuter your pet, the instinct to \u201cmate\u201d is gone. As you can see, this analogy would never apply to humans. Dogs and cats can be trained to do some really neat tricks, but abstinence is not one of them.<\/p>\n
The woman continued, \u201cAnd I will find homes for all my cat\u2019s kittens.\u201d<\/p>\n
(I know I was still smiling, but I think my eye started twitching.)<\/p>\n
The problem is that \u201cjust one litter\u201d contributes greatly to the pet overpopulation problem — especially when all the puppies and kittens born can have litters of their own a few months later. According to the Humane Society of the United States, one female dog and her unfixed offspring can produce 67,000 puppies in six years. A female cat and kittens can produce 420,000 kittens in seven years.<\/p>\n
June is Adopt-A-Cat month because more kittens are born in the springtime than any other time of the year. However, it\u2019s not just shelters that feel the brunt of this population explosion every year. I only have to open my e-mails to hear the frustrations of our own city\u2019s good Samaritans.<\/p>\n
Rita wrote in to say she was \u201cheartbroken\u201d because someone keeps dumping three-week old kittens at her family\u2019s home in the country. This was not the first time, nor sadly, would it probably be the last time. Just when they are done bottle-feeding one litter of kittens, someone dumps another litter on their doorstep.<\/p>\n
Ervinell wrote to say that she found three kittens abandoned on her church\u2019s doorsteps one Sunday. There apparently was no room at the Humane Society that day and the Animal Defense League was closed. \u201cWhere are we supposed to take the animals?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Sadly, the solution is harder than you can imagine. There is no facility in town capable of housing the 50,000 surplus dogs and cats our city produces every year\u2014and not enough people to adopt all the animals in need.<\/p>\n
There are some things you can do to help.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t dump unwanted pets on someone else\u2019s doorstep. As you can see, these actions are wearing on your neighbors nerves.<\/p>\n
Spay or neuter your pet. If you let your pet have \u201cjust one litter,\u201d then you are contributing to the euthanasia problem in our city.<\/p>\n
Adopt a pet, if you can. Cats, especially older cats, have a much harder time getting adopted and exist in greater numbers than any other orphaned pets.<\/p>\n
Become a foster parent. Take care of any strays or orphans that you find until there is room at an animal shelter. I know this can be difficult, but a few weeks of your time can make a lifetime of a difference to a pet.<\/p>\n
Of course, I am probably preaching to the choir. So maybe all you need to do is quietly pass this along to one of those people who make your head want to explode. I am sure you know a few.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A woman happily told me that she plans to get her cat spayed, but only after she has \u201cjust one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathyrosenthal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2245"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathyrosenthal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathyrosenthal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathyrosenthal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathyrosenthal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cathyrosenthal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cathyrosenthal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathyrosenthal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cathyrosenthal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}