Community Cats are very common in Fort Wayne neighborhoods, but they can also add to an issue of overpopulation. In the past, you could trap a community cat and take it to one of the local shelters to be fixed, vaccinated and returned to the neighborhood. Today, it’s a little more difficult.
Yana Bourkova-Morunov found a cat in her neighborhood and decided to trap him to get him fixed at one of the local clinics. She said he’s a beautiful cat with a great personality, so she thought it would be easy to take him to a shelter and have him fixed and adopted out.
“I did not realize how overwhelmed local shelters are at the moment,” Yana said.
Yana’s husband is extremely allergic to cats, so even though she thinks the cat would make a great domestic pet, her family can’t keep him. She took the cat to Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control, where they can only take a limited number of community cats each day and they had already reached their maximum capacity.
“I could have just surrendered him, but they said that a live outcome was not likely and I said that’s unacceptable to me and they just kind of said they couldn’t do anything, but they gave me a free towel, some cat food and a bowl for him and I brought him into my bathroom," she said.
Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control director Amy-Jo Sites said stories like Yana’s are, unfortunately, not rare.
"Because our high-volume, low-cost spay-neuter clinic here in town can’t accommodate the volume of outdoor cats right now, people are now starting to come here for surgeries," she said. "The problem is I only have one full-time veterinarian.”
That veterinarian, Sites said, is only supposed to be doing two types of animals; those going into the foster or adoption program and those coming in from the field.
She said they’ve been trying to accommodate what they call ‘over-the-counter walk-ins’ for community cats, but they have to prioritize animals that are going up for adoption or coming in from fosters.
"So, what we do is literally on a daily basis, we cap how many people can walk in our shelter. We have people lining up at 9 AM with a community cat to get fixed and we may only have three spots that day," Sites said. "But, again, that’s not what we were designed to do.”
As of the morning of Aug. 15, Sites said Animal Care and Control has 170 cats in their shelter and another 123 out in foster homes —293 cats in all.
She said they only adopted out 33 cats on the day before.
They’ve been running promotions and specials trying to encourage adoption of cats," Sites said. "In June, they waived fees on adult cats and made kittens adoptable as “pick your own price.”
Right now, they’re promoting ‘Adopt a Feline Study Buddy’ for back-to-school, because cats are low-maintenance pets and can help reduce stress.
“All of our off-site adoption centers are filled with cats," Sites said. "You won’t find an off-site dog center for our facility. It’s all cats. Pet Supplies Plus, Petsmart, some of the local veterinarians and, of course, the Black Forest Cat Cafe.”
The low-cost, high-volume clinic Sites mentioned is a part of Humane Fort Wayne, their Maysville Road location. They were Yana’s next call.
“I did an online appointment and just got the rejection and they said ‘well, we have free food for people who are in need,’ which is nice but, again, my husband is allergic," Yana said.
Humane Fort Wayne is currently in the process of moving to a larger facility, one that will double their space for dogs and triple it for cats. Melissa Gibson is the community relations manager for Humane Fort Wayne.
She said they’ve had to slow their intake while they prepare to move.
"So, I can’t fill everything up when we’re then gonna have to shuffle everybody and we don’t even know what we’re doing over here yet," Gibson said.
Gibson also said the funding they were receiving focused on community cats isn’t really there anymore. After COVID, priorities shifted to pet retention, when people are struggling to afford to keep their pets.
She said that although overall inflation is at 4%, pet-related inflation is at 20%.
“People are looking to us for assistance, even with vaccines and pet food and wellness, that have never looked for us before," Gibson said.
Gibson said they’ve gotten some complaints because Humane Fort Wayne no longer does community cat walk-ins, but she said they were able to offer that service because of grant funds that they don’t have anymore.
"And you have to make those heartbreaking choices about who you take and who you don’t," she said. "And how do you balance giving help to the animals and the people that need it, versus how do you make the biggest impact in the population, and then hope that you can marry those things together and do the absolute best you can for the most that you can.”
Being the low-cost, high-volume clinic in the area, it’s not just Animal Care and Control that’s redirecting people to Humane.
“We are doing spay-neuter for 27 other shelter and rescue organizations," Gibson said. "A lot of those are shelters and rescues where those animals, too, are at risk to be euthanized. So, when they say to me ‘I wanna get these animals on my adoption floor, but I gotta get them neutered,’ I’m not telling them no. Because if they’re not altered, they’re getting put to sleep.”
Animal Care and Control doesn’t have a forward-facing clinic. Their veterinarian is only meant to serve the animals owned by the city of Fort Wayne and in the adoption or foster programs.
“So, it does become a community problem then," Sites said. "How can they help? They can either donate, they can pay for the community cat surgeries. I believe it’s like $42, but that’s one less cat that’s gonna produce a litter. Donate, volunteer, foster, all of those factors come into play. But, we need more resources to get animals spayed or neuters, so we can reduce the number of intake that’s coming in.”
It’s worth noting that the $42 is the price at Humane Fort Wayne, where they subsidize more than 25% of the price for their Community Cat Assistance package, which includes spay-neuter, vaccines, microchipping and ear tipping.
But if Humane Fort Wayne is also backed up, someone looking to help a community cat might have to take them to a private vet, where that surgery will cost more, even up into the hundreds.
This is the route Yana has chosen, assuming the cat comes back. After three nights living in her bathroom, she had to let the cat back outside because of her husband’s severe allergies.
She said the cat needed space to roam, but otherwise was very friendly with her children, litter trained and even allowed Yana to bathe him.
“So, it just breaks my heart that a perfect candidate for a domestic pet is turned away because we are apparently at capacity," she said.
Yana has an appointment for a few weeks out with her vet that she intends to keep. She just hopes the cat will come back before that visit.
