Milam Touch of Love sponsored our first community cat spay and neuter. These cats don’t have people able to bring them in, so we went to their colonies to humanely trap them in preparation for their surgeries. We could afford to alter 40 cats, so that’s how many we trapped. The Cameron Shelter allowed us to stage the cats in their facility, so we trapped Cameron cats first. We had assistance from Cody Courtain of Snip and Tip out of Killeen. He taught us about larger scale trapping. We used our homeless cat census and most of the cats trapped last weekend had been reported two years ago (if you’ve reported more recently, don’t despair).
While the cats waited for their surgery day, we fed and watered them and cleaned their traps. Most waited patiently. Three of the cats we trapped were already spayed or neutered, so we returned them to where we got them from, leaving 37 cats for surgery. One cat was discovered to have already been neutered when he was anesthetized for surgery, so his ear was tipped, and he was returned to his trap (this is why ear-tipping an outdoor or indoor/outdoor kitty is so important — we can prevent them from having to be anesthetized only to discover it wasn’t necessary). So, thirty-six cats got surgery. Twenty-three males were neutered and fourteen females were spayed. If you figure each female has a litter from 4-8 kittens for an average of 6, we saved at least 84 more cats from being created and born. By the end of the year, the 14 females and on average 42 female kittens being born, would have each produced another litter each for 336 more cats. That will not happen for this group of cats. We realize the need is great for Milam County and this is only a drop in the bucket, but we had to start somewhere. If you want to help, it starts with donations, and $2000 allows us to spay/neuter up to 40 cats. Mr. Robert Bohner sponsored this event.