In a nutshell – Be the change! Get involved in TNR, get certified by attending a Neighborhood Cats Workshop and become citizen-rescuers amid NYC’s overwhelming Cat Crisis.
Please take the time to read the information provided in the link thoroughly. It holds vital insights that can help us help the most vulnerable and voiceless among us.
NYC’s Cat Crisis & the burden on rescuers
New York City has a HUGE Cat-Crisis of gargantuan proportions. Not enough people spay or neuter their pets for various reasons, and allow them to reproduce exponentially, eventually either hoarding, giving them away unfixed to stores and families, or dumping them outside. During the pandemic there were a record number of pet-adoptions by just about everybody which also added to a record number of pet-dumpings post-pandemic. But at the same time economic instability during the pandemic and a lack of affordable, pet-friendly housing too contributed to the pet-abandonment crisis.
But this problem of a lack of spaying/neutering due to financial, cultural or apathetic reasons was not new – the pandemic only pushed it to beyond a tipping point. It was bad enough before – it’s catastrophic now.
Finding funding or resources prior to 2020 was hard enough, and in the years since, the animal rescue community – especially independent rescue groups and rescuers who do the major lifting of on-site rescues can barely keep afloat (while national chains receive huge funding but do not take up many cases).
In our case, we’re fewer than a handful of people paying for the upkeep and expenses from our own pockets, scouring Buy Nothing groups for free food or litter, and asking for donations through our Amazon Wishlist or through Venmo or any supplies one can donate.
New York City needs city-funded, high-volume spay-neuter programs that provide free or low-cost spay-neuter services to every New Yorker. Instead in recent years, since large financial hedge funds took over several vet practices, vet costs have skyrocketed as well.
The very few low cost clinics in the city which rescuers rely upon (like the BBAWC who do wonderful, life-saving work) often have such a high demand it is extremely difficult to get appointments.
Meanwhile the ASPCA which shut down several clinics during the pandemic, despite the massive funding it receives, does not even add more TNR-certified rescuers since 2019 to receive services in their community clinics – making jostling for free spay/neuter spots akin to winning a lottery. Only those registered prior to that have access to slots and when slots are not filled up, they simply go to waste. Due to this the majority of NYC rescuers have to go to private clinics for spay-neuter-vaccinations that charge a lot more.
There is somewhere between half to a million homeless cats in NYC, and more keep reproducing daily while other unfixed ones get dumped daily as well. The tragic stories and calls to help abandoned, injured, diseased, abused, unfixed cats and kittens we deal with daily is an emotional, physical, mental, financial burden almost all independent rescuers and groups are all too familiar with.
We cannot adopt our way out of this crisis. The only, ONLY way is to spay/neuter all the unfixed cats in the city and frankly all over the world – whether community, store/bodega ones (the majority of which live horrific lives in NYC locked up in dark, dank basements with little food and no vet care for their entire lives), and to also make sure those living inside residences are fixed and vetted as well, and to educate those who refuse to vet/fix their cats due to outdated and/or unscientific beliefs.
Addressing this issue also necessitates the provision of affordable, accessible veterinary care, as well as a firm commitment from New York City officials to uphold their mandated responsibility for managing animal overpopulation, as outlined in the city code.
At the same time, it is neither fair nor sustainable to rely so heavily on citizen volunteers—individuals who already endure significant financial strain, physical effort, mental fatigue, and emotional hardship—to shoulder the weight of a problem our own laws recognize as a municipal obligation.
If we are truly committed to easing the relentless flow of surrendered and abandoned cats and dogs, our approach must remain collaborative. But the time has come for city leadership to assume a far more active and accountable role.
In the meantime, if you have read this far – THANK YOU! Overburdened rescuers like me/us receive calls to help a cat or cats several times daily even if the caller may have room in their own home, or know a friend who can help and be financially and spatially in a better situation to help even more than the rescuer.
What should you do? Become the change! Help us help you.
Enroll in a TNR class, get TNR certified to help spay/neuter community cats. And even certification is not needed to help in other ways obviously! When you see a friendly dumped cat who is starving, give the cat food to lure him into a carrier and contact a rescue group for the next steps; if you can afford it, reach out to a community low-cost vet clinic to see if they can examine and fix the cat. Ask your local cat rescuers in your neighborhood how you can help. If they’re the ones doing the trapping of cats to get them fixed, ask if you can offer them a ride. And there are so many other ways!
Ask your friends, relatives, colleagues and post on social media to see if people can foster, provided their home is cat-safe. Let’s help each other out! Let’s do it!
Be the change….help us help countless innocents who have no voice.
Park Slope Cats 