Dr. Julie Levy matured wishing to be a vet, however she didn’t believe she might do science.
“Typical girl thing,” Levy said.
Levy would quickly understand simply how incorrect her younger self had actually been when she began her very first professors position at the University of Florida’s veterinary school in 1997.
Alachua County’s animal shelter had actually taken in almost 6,000 cats that year and wound up euthanizing 80% of them.
“It was just a massive overpopulation flowing into the shelter, overwhelming it to the point that its only foreseeable option was to euthanize thousands of cats every year,” Levy said.
She said she discovered there were no proactive or preventive programs in location at the time to fight the concern. So, with the help of her coworkers, she began one herself.
Operation Catnip was born simply a year later on, ending up being the very first, and now the biggest, university-based trap-neuter-return program worldwide. Since its opening, the program has actually been duplicated around the world, reaching about 5 continents up until now.
The primary function of the program is to permit caretakers to bring neighborhood cats into the center so that they can get repaired, immunized and gone back to where they were discovered.
According to Melissa Jenkins, the director of operations at Operation Catnip, TNR is specifically crucial throughout the spring and summertime, otherwise referred to as “kitten season,” when there is a big increase of kittens being born and brought into shelters.
To battle overpopulation, the program motivates members of the neighborhood who’ve already begun taking care of the kittens to take them in.
“Last year, we kept 1,400 kittens out of the shelter through people being willing to foster and find homes for them on their own,” said Jenkins.
Without them, over 1,000 kittens would have stayed at shelters where they are less most likely to flourish due to the specialized care they require.
“They are very likely to get sick because they have under-developed immune systems,” said Jenkins.
Operation Catnip likewise networks with regional shelters and saves so individuals who bring kittens in understand Operation Catnip offers complimentary healthcare.
Kind Kitty Rescue, a private-intake kitten rescue that relocated to Gainesville in November, deals with Operation Catnip in TNR and owners Halie Waid and Hillary Saunders have direct experience in taking care of neonatal kittens.
The kitten rescue dealt with Operation Catnip back in Virginia and when Waid and Saunders saw that the program was likewise in Gainesville, they instantly presented themselves and joined their network.
Besides assisting neighborhood cats and their caretakers, Operation Catnip likewise offers veterinary trainees a chance to get hands-on experience carrying out surgical treatments and handling animal shelters.
For fourth-year veterinary trainee Katie Houston, operating at Operation Catnip sealed the dream she had when she initially pertained to UF, which was to operate in shelter medication.
What stood apart to her the most about the professors who worked there was their mentor worths.
“Their real goal, at the end of the day, is to create a generation of people that are way more compassionate and understanding for what community cats actually are,” Houston said. “It really hits you hard when working in the clinic.”
Houston said she began working throughout her very first year and has actually considering that ended up being an ambassador for the program. Her primary responsibility is to bridge the space for trainees who wish to get included however don’t understand how.
“I’ve kind of slowly worked my way up the chain of command,” said Houston. She now does surgical treatments individually and runs medical case management along with knowledgeable medical professionals.
She credits a great deal of her success to individuals she’s satisfied along the method who’ve mentored her.
“They really have let me grow into my own as a baby shelter vet,” Houston said. “I really don’t know what I would have done without having this program in my vet school career.”
Unlike Houston, fourth-year trainee Lindsay Garrison focuses on big animals such as horses, sheep and cows. But she chose to do an internship in the program to get more surgical experience.
“We do get a little bit of surgical experience while we’re in school,” said Garrison, “but certainly not to the degree of working in a spay-neuter facility.”
She said she valued how hands-on the program was and the kinds of medication she’s found out to deal with. Operation Catnip taught her not just how to make sterile and sterilize cats, however likewise how to treat eye issues and breathing infections.
The very first time she returned a group of cats to their houses, she remembered them lacking their little cages.
“That was a really great moment,” Garrison said. Seeing the animals that she’d immunized, dewormed, made sterile or neutered return into the world to be a cat once again was a gratifying sensation, she said.
In 2022, some 6,000 of the 7,000 surgical treatments carried out at Operation Catnip were done by the trainees themselves.
To this day, Levy said she discovers these numbers something to be pleased with.
“It’s a really unique opportunity they have here at the University of Florida that they can’t get anywhere else,” Levy said.
She said she is likewise pleased with how far Gainesville has actually been available in taking care of neighborhood cats and resolving the overpopulation crisis. Although there is an enormous scarcity of veterinarians in the United States, she said the neighborhood does a good job of attempting to fill the space. Even individuals who discover a roaming cat in the street do their part.
“They really don’t like the cats, but they still feel compelled to protect them,” said Levy. “I love that about people.”
The exact same shelter that took in 8,000 cats in 1997 now takes in 2,000 a year. Instead of putting down the bulk, the shelter now euthanizes less than 100.
Levy said she was pressed to return to undergrad and use to veterinary school in 1997 since she saw her mom do it initially.
“My mom, late in her life, became a nurse,” Levy said. “She had to take science classes and was successful.”
It was a long journey to reach her original childhood dream, Levy said, but she’s found her place in academia and veterinary schools.
She now serves as the Fran Marino Distinguished Professor of Shelter Medicine Education at UF.
“It is the perfect blend of teaching and making the world a better place,” she said. “And science, believe it or not.”
*When Kind Kitty Rescue owners Halie Waid and Hillary Saunders are educating rescuers about neonatal care, the first thing they tell them about is compassion fatigue.
It’s when you’re doing so much good that you forget to take care of yourself, Saunders said.
When they first started their rescue in Virginia, they took in as many as 56 kittens at one time. Each kitten required bottle feeding every two hours, 24/7.
“Imagine doing that with 56 kittens, and they’re two of us,” Waid said.
Waid said when they go out rescuing, they ideally want to trap both the mom and her kittens at the same time. But that doesn’t always work out.
Back in Virginia, they recalled a day when it was snowing and they had to take a litter of kittens into their house and leave the mother outside.
To lure the mother into a cage, they recorded the kitten’s screams on their phone and played the recording on a loop under a blanket that was placed in the cage.
“The mom went in, so then we were able to reunite everybody,” Saunders said.
While days like those have been rewarding for Waid and Saunders, there have been numerous times when the kittens did not make it through.
That’s when the Kind Kitty Rescue owners would feel they weren’t making the effect that they desired — one that would save as numerous kittens as possible.
Waid and Saunders said they started checking out TNR in addition to offering neonatal care, which led to half the variety of kittens entering their home.
“We’ve found that the best way to help kittens in the community is to spay and neuter at the source,” Saunders said.
