Correspondence - #52 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Orozco, Norma From: Deborah Felin <catpaws.deborah@gmail.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2023 1:49 PM To: eComment Subject: Santa Ana cat spay/neuter TNR Program Greetings, I am writing in support of a Spay/Neuter program in Santa Ana. As rescuers, and those who care about animals, we are faced every day with the consequences of unwanted litters. As I volunteered at the OC Animal Care Pet Food Pantry one Saturday morning, asking folks what city they were from and what pets they had, a lady tearfully recounted how she was trying to feed the starving cats around her apartment complex in Santa Ana, cats who kept getting pregnant, making more homeless kittens, born to suffer and die. Her English was better than my Spanish but the despair in her voice needed no translation. She said her neighbor threatened to beat her up for feeding them. She didn't want to see these kittens dying and suffering, what could she do, she pleaded with me? As I stood there, a line of cars behind her, I gazed up at the massive, beautiful building that houses Orange County Animal Services, paid for with millions of dollars of taxpayer money, and told her I didn't know who could help her. There is no provision at Orange County Animal Care Services for public spay/neuter assistance. There is no longer a TNR program. Our organization gave out 900 spay neuter vouchers last year, over 500 of which were redeemed, costing our organization about $50,000 to help people in Orange County get their cats fixed, over 140 of those to Santa Ana residents alone. This is not an expense our small non-profit cat rescue can continue to bear. Other groups struggle valiantly, but we are overmatched by the magnitude of the problem. There are those who will say, 'they're just cats, we have bigger problems'. There are always problems, some bigger than others, but the suffering of animals intersects with that of humans in a uniquely profound way, and for those who don't care about the cats I would ask them to care about the people who do. In these unwanted, sometimes abused and discarded creatures, perhaps some people see themselves, living on the margins of a society in which they feel they have no voice and no one cares, scrounging just to survive. I have often found it is the people who have the least who care the most. I think, too, of shelter staff, confronted with the grim task of killing kitten after kitten after litter. This is a human toll, too often dismissed and devalued. A sampling of the many emails and messages we get from residents trying to help cats in their community: "...my husband checked our cameras and saw that a coyote entered our yard in the early am. We kept filling the bowls for over a week and drove the neighborhood streets and never saw them again. It broke my heart. To this day, I look for them. I loved watching them play in our yard"