(Beth Clifton collage)
Shelter Animals Count finds extra dogs euthanized than cats in shelters for first time because the first surveys had been completed
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania; BRUNSWICK, Maine; ATLANTA, Georgia––A political combat over spay/neuter funding in Pittsburgh, the seven-year-old Feline Fix by Five marketing campaign directed by Esther Mechler from Brunswick, Maine, and the lately launched 2023 Annual Analysis from the Shelter Animals Count consortium have in widespread makes an attempt to grapple with the post-COVID-19 spay/neuter hole.
All put the highlight on cats.
(See In 2023, Shelter Animals Count estimates.)
The spay/neuter hole was estimated in 2022 by University of Florida at Gainesville professor Julie Levy and fellow researchers as 2.7 million fewer surgical procedures carried out in 2020-2021 than would have been carried out if the tempo of 2019 had been sustained.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Consequences of COVID-19 s/n shutdowns
The penalties of a lot of the humane neighborhood having dropped spay/neuter like a hissing, spitting cat with all 20 claws flying, as suggested on the time by the American SPCA [ASPCA] and others, seem to have developed precisely as ANIMALS 24-7 and visitor columnists Ruth Steinberger of SpayFIRST! and Bryan Kortis of Neighborhood Cats predicted it could again in April 2020, however a lot much less catastrophically for cats than for dogs.
Animal shelter intakes are up, shelter killing is up, and though adoptions have elevated, with shelters receiving extra wholesome puppies and kittens to rehome, the U.S. as an entire was on the finish of 2023––in accordance with Shelter Animals Count––nonetheless not less than 359,000 dogs and 330,000 cats in need of turning into a “no-kill nation” by 2025, the longtime said purpose of the Best Friends Animal Society and plenty of different no-kill organizations
ANIMALS 24-7 will individually look at the Shelter Animals Count canine knowledge, most of it dangerous information involving pit bulls, whom the Shelter Animals Count report by no means mentions, at a later date.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Yes, there may be some excellent news
The excellent news––and sure, there may be some excellent news––largely pertains to cats.
Credit for which may be taken by these free and low-cost spay/neuter packages that saved going by way of the COVID-19 years, together with that of Animal Friends in Pittsburgh.
A well timed help got here from Feline Fix by Five, which had gained momentum nationwide earlier than COVID-19 hit.
Feline Fix by Five, promoted by Esther Mechler by way of the organizations Marian’s Dream and the United Spay Alliance, now seems to have shifted veterinary and public notion of the perfect age to spay a cat downward, from six months to 5 months, so efficiently in seven years of campaigning that the previous advice of ready till a feminine kitten has her first warmth is now not discovered excessive within the Google search rankings.
Currently the primary 15 entries about when to spay a cat provided by Dr. Google, the primary supply consulted by most individuals for veterinary recommendation worldwide, now stipulate that feminine cats must be spayed at or earlier than 5 months of age.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Why Feline Fix by Five?
The internet end result of that, when it comes to surgical procedures carried out and litters prevented, shouldn’t be simply quantified, however could also be evident in a few of the Shelter Animals Count cat knowledge.
Motivating Mechler, she says, is that “According to a study in Framingham, Massachusetts, done years ago, 87% of all litters are ‘first litters,’ born around the age of five months.
“Many pet owners don’t know the appropriate age to spay/neuter their cat, while many think six months or later is okay,” or not less than did.
“In a marketing study done from 2009 and 2011” Mechler recounts, “in a sample of 3,000, three-fourths of adults fell into these categories.”
Esther Mechler.
Someone has to carry out the surgical procedure
Other analysis completed across the similar time discovered that whereas 87% of feminine pet cats had been already sterilized, the homeowners of seven%––greater than half––believed they need to sterilize their cats after the cats’ first warmth, at which level a lot of these cats would turn into pregnant.
“The veterinary profession does not have a standardized recommendation for the age of spay/neuter in cats,” continues Mechler “Some veterinarians may still be working on outdated information, putting lives at risk and enabling potentially unwanted litters.
“Feline Fix by Five aims to change that by spreading awareness on the importance of fixing early, and the lifesaving difference spaying/neutering even one month sooner can make.”
Of course somebody has to really carry out the surgical procedure, and individuals who have cats should be capable of afford the operations, as Mechler is aware of from her 20 years of directing the nationwide SpayUSA hotline for the North Shore Animal League America.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Money issues
Extensive analysis has demonstrated repeatedly for greater than 50 years that households at or above the median U.S. revenue stage are greater than twice as prone to have their feminine cats spayed at common veterinary costs than households residing under the median, with spay charges predictably dropping most precipitously for households under the poverty line, though, on common, low revenue households feed simply as many cats as these within the higher revenue brackets.
That brings up the Pittsburgh fracas. Explained Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Sydney Carruth on February 7, 2024, “A citywide program that provides free spay/neuter services for Pittsburgh pet owners is coming to a halt, the city’s Bureau of Animal Care & Control announced Tuesday.
“The taxpayer-funded program is aimed at keeping the city’s population of stray cats and dogs at bay by offering free spay/neuter procedures to pet owners who have a Pittsburgh address.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Some may call them “community cats” however the neighborhood doesn’t purchase it
“Since the program launched in 2015,” Carruth continued, “veterinary staff at Animal Friends have performed thousands of spay and neuter surgeries at their Animal Wellness Clinic, according to Cindy Cole, a spokesperson for the Animal Friends shelter.”
Unfortunately, the Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety lately found “cases of non-Pittsburgh residents borrowing the city addresses of friends and family to have their pets spayed or neutered for free,” Carruth wrote.
Subsidizing spay/neuter as a neighborhood funding precedence is a tough promote to taxpayers and elected officers anyplace, particularly once they understand that they’re offering free providers to non-taxpayers who don’t reside––or vote––throughout the neighborhood.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Truth or penalties?
The advantages of subsidizing spay/neuter exterior the rapid neighborhood might be demonstrated in ecological phrases, however not so simply in {dollars} and cents as perceived by taxpayers who ask “What’s in it for me?”
The penalties of not subsidizing spay/neuter for anybody, although, are simply predictable.
Warned Catcalls Rescue director Jody Mader, “If cats cannot get fixed this spring, we are going to see a repeat of what happened during COVID when all of the vets shut down their services and canceled spay/neuter appointments. After that, the number of homeless cats skyrocketed.”
Pittsburgh Hill District Cats director Rivky Blumberger predicted that the Pittsburgh homeless cat inhabitants would possibly triple.
Carruth closed by echoing guarantees that “Staff at the Bureau of Animal Care and Control will work to develop new applicant criteria that are tailored to Pittsburgh pet owners most in need,” and “will also focus on ways to keep the feral cat population under control, according to the city.”
ANIMALS 24-7, together with Pittsburgh animal advocates and cat rescuers, shall be watching.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Shelter Animals Count
Shelter Animals Count, a $500,000-a-year organization with a $101,000-a-year govt director, was shaped in 2011 by a consortium now funded by 28 nationwide animal charities and foundations as a distant and oblique descendant of the National Council on Pet Population Study & Policy, shaped by an overlapping consortium in 1993.
Prior to 1993, animal shelter consumption and exit data had been systematically tabulated solely twice ever, by National Family Opinion Survey founders Howard and Clara Trumbull in 1947-1950, whose findings had been later printed by the American Humane Association, and by the American Humane Association itself, in 1986, reporting knowledge from 1985.
All different printed estimates had been projected from these two surveys, typically up to date by casual American Humane Association surveys completed by postcard.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Shibboleths disproven
Both the National Council on Pet Population Study & Policy and Shelter Animals Count originated after ANIMALS 24-7 repeatedly embarrassed a lot of the humane neighborhood by demonstrating the inaccuracy of many cherished shibboleths primarily based on dangerous knowledge.
In 1993 the focal drawback was that the arrival of low-cost and free high-volume spay/neuter, along with public acceptance of the necessity to sterilize dogs and cats, had pushed down animal shelter intakes and inhabitants management killing a lot quicker than most individuals working in animal shelters realized.
ANIMALS 24-7 responded to this, on a funds of nothing, by gathering shelter knowledge from any and all shelters that printed or in any other case launched their consumption and exit data; assembling the knowledge to get fairly full counts for entire cities, counties, or states, as attainable; after which proportionately weighting the info to get good geographical illustration.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Focal issues modified with progress
ANIMALS 24-7 projected that the numbers of animals really dealt with and killed by U.S. shelters in 1992 had been about half of the American Humane Association estimate.
The National Council on Pet Population Study & Policy subsequently spent 4 years and half 1,000,000 {dollars} to supply almost precisely the identical estimate.
ANIMALS 24-7 went on to supply and publish more and more advanced estimates for annually, 1997-2014.
By 2011 the focal drawback had turn into––and nonetheless is––a widespread false impression that elevated adoptions can get the U.S. to no-kill animal management, whatever the actuality that “too many pets and not enough homes” doesn’t tackle the problems introduced by feral cats, who largely by no means had properties, and harmful dogs, largely pit bulls, who can’t be responsibly rehomed or returned to their former properties.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Pet adoption price per capita flatlined since 1982
The later ANIMALS 24-7 shelter visitors estimates spotlighted these points, together with that regardless of ever-increasing spending on adoption efforts, canine and cat adoption quantity from shelters has just about flatlined at between 4 and 5 million animals per yr since 1982, when Richard Nasser did the primary nationwide survey of pet acquisitions.
Proportionate to the variety of pet-keeping households, pet adoption quantity from shelters has really dropped steadily for greater than 50 years.
Increasing s/n made the distinction
Increasing s/n made the distinctionWhat the numbers clearly confirmed was, and is, that elevated spay/neuter efforts account for about 95% of the progress in decreasing shelter killing from as excessive as 23.4 million dogs and cats per yr in 1970, and 17.8 million in 1985, to circa 680,000 in 2023.
If turning into a no-kill nation is actually the purpose, all the trouble put into selling adoptions is actually irrelevant.
The strategy to get there may be to sterilize the animal populations at highest danger––feral cats and pit bulls––out of existence.
Which is precisely what ANIMALS 24-7 mentioned, as keynote speaker, on the very first No Kill Conference in Phoenix in 1995.
The internet end result of the later ANIMALS 24-7 knowledge monitoring was that Maddie’s Fund and the Best Friends Animal Society, hellbent on selling adoptions in denial of actuality, insisted that the ANIMALS 24-7 knowledge needed to be unsuitable.
First, in 2004, Maddie’s Fund and the Best Friends Animal Society negotiated the Asilomar Accords, together with a standardized knowledge monitoring protocol. ANIMALS 24-7 integrated the info collected and posted utilizing the Asilomar Accords into our system. Predictably, the proportionately weighted knowledge didn’t change a lot.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Expanded knowledge enter
Another seven years of fulminating, politicking, and gnashing of tooth introduced concerning the formation of Shelter Animals Count, producing annual shelter consumption and exit stories since 2016.
Anticipating theirs, ANIMALS 24-7 give up producing ours, whereas elevating many questions for Shelter Animals Count and others to attempt to reply going ahead.
(See Record low shelter killing raises each hopes & questions.)
Ten years since then, Shelter Animals Count has enormously expanded the vary of information enter for annual estimates of shelter consumption and exists, from about 600 organizations contributing to 100 knowledge strains in our 2014 tables, to about 6,000, consultant of 4,915 animal shelters and 9,514 shelterless rescues.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Proportional weighting
Shelter Animals Count has additionally added a number of extra classes of information monitoring, together with interagency transfers and the numbers of cats “returned to field,” an method to decreasing intakes and euthanasias primarily based on the notion that stray cats will discover their very own manner home, simply barely coming into vogue a decade in the past.
Most considerably, explains Shelter Animals Count govt director Stephanie Filer, for reporting the 2023 knowledge, “Using intake and outcome data from over 6,000 organizations nationwide, Shelter Animals Count developed a peer-reviewed estimation model that includes representative data from all animal sheltering organization types and sizes in all U.S. states and territories. Data was analyzed separately to account for organizational differences, and then combined for the national numbers shared in this report.”
In different phrases, aside from the 2 phrases “peer-reviewed,” and aside from having greater than ten occasions as a lot enter knowledge to work with, Shelter Animals Count is now utilizing primarily the identical proportional weighting technique that ANIMALS 24-7 used all alongside.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Cats are experiencing a more hopeful trend”
What has Shelter Animals Count found relative to the post-COVID-19 spay/neuter hole?
The Shelter Animals Count findings pertaining to dogs would require a separate dialogue, as already talked about, due to the affect of pit bull consumption, an element that Shelter Animals Count leaves unmentioned and subsequently unexplored.
“Cats are experiencing a more hopeful trend: 2.6 million cats were adopted in 2023, 14% more than 2019,” Shelter Animals Count says.
Combined with canine adoptions, U.S. animal shelters and rescues rehomed about 4.8 million animals in 2023, on the excessive finish of the vary since 1982.
Relative to U.S. human inhabitants, this represents a 17% lower within the shelter adoption price per capita.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Cat intakes “nearly on a par” with pre-COVID-19
“In 2023, community intakes for cats are nearly on par with 2019 [pre-COVID] levels,” Shelter Animals Count finds. “Stray intakes are down by 6% compared to 2019,” indicative of the continued success of neuter/return.
“Owner surrenders for cats have remained steady since 2021 (accounting for 25% of total intakes), but they are 8% higher (73,000 cats) than 2019 rates,” a discovering presumably attributable to growing older among the many human inhabitants and to a nationwide housing scarcity, obliging many cat-keepers to reluctantly quit pet cats.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Cat intakes up, however at slower price
“Cats are also witnessing an uptick in non-live outcomes [mostly meaning euthanized], albeit at a slower rate,” Shelter Animals Count stories. “There was an 8% increase (34,000 more cats) compared to 2022 and a 3% increase (+15,000 cats) compared to 2021. However, the data shows a positive shift as 31% fewer cats (-198,000 cats) experienced non-live outcomes in 2023 compared to 2019. Died in care rates for cats have remained relatively flat since 2021.
“In 2023, the total number of cats entering shelters exceeded the number of cats leaving by 2%. This means there were an additional 70,000 cats still waiting for an outcome at the end of 2023.
“34,000 more cats were adopted compared to 2022, while 319,000 more cats were adopted compared to 2019. The percentage of intakes that resulted in an adoption has increased from 59% in 2019 to 65% in 2023,” in accordance with Shelter Animals Count.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
Return-to-field, as distinguished from neuter/return of actually feral cats to their habitat, “decreased from 7% in 2019 to 6% in 2023,” Shelter Animals Count says, which means that “12,000 fewer cats were returned to field in 2023 compared to 2019, even with intakes very close to 2019 levels.”
Altogether, 363,000 cats had been “returned to owner/field” in 2023, in contrast with 330,000 “euthanized in shelters.”
