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Many of the tags noting arrival dates of the cats at the Central New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are fastened to filled enclosures, and often dated within the week. In Syracuse and throughout upstate New York, the cat overpopulation is overwhelming shelters and exhausting resources.

“There just aren’t enough of us,” Dee Schaefer, an administrative assistant at the CNY SPCA, said in an email statement.

High costs and minimal resources for neutering and spaying stray cats along with limited capacity in shelters is leading to a growing cat population in New York state that is outpacing organizations’ ability to care for them. In Syracuse and statewide, advocates are calling for increased government funding for the groups tasked with handling the overflow.

The SPCA has taken in 300 cats in the Syracuse area since January, Schaefer said. The organization is currently caring for up to 60 cats, more than twice the number it fosters for any other animal, she added. Just one veterinarian and three staff members care for the SPCA’s cats, Schafer said.

Other Central New York organizations which care for stray and abandoned cats are struggling to meet demands as well. The CNY Cat Coalition, which places cats in foster homes and provides adoption resources, has been receiving about 150 calls per week to help with stray, surrendered and abandoned cats, said Rebekah McGraw, the coalition’s vice president.

“We are very, very, very stressed out,” McGraw said. “There’s not enough hands on deck.”

Despite a high placement of around 1,000 cats in homes in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, McGraw said high adoption rates haven’t fixed the overpopulation of cats. Amid rising numbers of cats in need of foster homes, the CNY Cat Coalition wrote on Facebook explaining its capacity issues.

“Our volunteer foster parents are overflowing with cats,” the Facebook post read. “They’re burned out. They have full-time jobs and families and other commitments and we cannot ever match the demand.”

Kathleen O’Malley, the director of community cat education at Bideawee’s Feral Cat Initiative in New York City, said cat overpopulation is an issue everywhere.

“It’s not just a Syracuse problem,” O’Malley said. “It’s definitely spread across the nation because pretty much there are community cats anywhere where people live.”

Shelters and organizations’ inability to meet high demand stems from a shortage of veterinarians to spay and neuter cats, McGraw said. The shortage has created a backup of appointments at animal clinics and expensive prices for fixing cats. In the Syracuse area, veterinarians are booked at least a month or two out, she continued.

“When people abandon unneutered pets that just starts the cycle all over again,” O’Malley said.

Nationwide, successful communities rely on “trap, neuter and release” tactics as well as animal shelters and accessible spay and neuter clinics, O’Malley said. While this decreases the cat population, communities still need government funding to help, according to the Humane Society of the United States.

In total, over the past five years, New York state has given $20 million to animal shelters and stray services, according to the NYS Animal Protection Federation. The federation estimated in 2021 that 26 shelters need a total of $56.7 million. In Syracuse, McGraw agreed that government funding is not enough.

The CNY Cat Coalition hopes for more government funding from Onondaga County and New York state for shots, spay and neuter accessibility and adoption services, McGraw said. Without government funding for cats specifically, she continued, nonprofit organizations such as the CNY Cat Coalition have been put at the forefront of finding affordable care.

“We would love for the government of Onondaga County to help us fund,” McGraw said. “Someone to take the leadership to make the spay and neuter clinic that can be affordable to the community and to rescue organizations.”

Published on August 29, 2022 at 12:06 am