San Francisco, Calif., Mar 7 2011: Hot on the heels of a hugely successful Feral Fix weekend in March, the San Francisco SPCA is gearing up for another team effort to get out in front of the inevitable approach of Kitten Season.
Cats have an extremely robust reproductive capacity. Females can reach sexual maturity in as little as 5 months. A cat in heat can bear a litter with kittens from multiple fathers. Cats can also bear multiple litters in a single Kitten Season. All that activity can lead to rampant overpopulation among free-roaming cats, particularly in the Bay Area, where mild weather means Kitten Season can often last for eight months of the year. The result: every year, the SF SPCA struggles to feed, house and keep healthy far too many kittens.
In order to ease the burden on the shelter, the SF SPCA works with community volunteers to prevent as many feral and free-roaming cats as possible from reproducing. Over the course of the first weekend in March, volunteers brought in 58 cats. On Sunday the 6th, a tireless team of surgeons and support staff in our state-of-the-art Spay/Neuter Clinic managed to sterilize all 58 cats - in addition to providing top-notch care to paying clients.
On Sunday, April 17, the San Francisco SPCA will hold a special city-wide feral fix clinic. This clinic will not be available for owned cats; it is for free-roamers and ferals only. If you know of feral or free-roaming colonies in need of services, please call (415) 522-3539. The SF SPCA has volunteers available to assist in trapping and colony management.
Trapped feral cats for this special clinic will be accepted ONLY at the following times:
For information on this special event, or on our regular Feral Fix program, please read our Feral Fix page.