From: Michelle Leighty <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 3, 2022 11:29 AM
To: Mayor and Council <[email protected]> Subject: [External] City Council Meeting 5/3/2022
My name is Michelle Leighty. My background:
• I am a volunteer community cat feeder for the Donaldson Way colony and an advocate for the Community Cats of American Canyon.
• I am part of a small group of like minded community members who volunteer to control the growing population of community cats through Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Return. • I am a volunteer foster Mom to an American canyon feral cat and her 3 kittens born in the garage of a community member.
I have concerns and questions regarding our county’s low cost spay and neuter service provider, Napa Humane. This is an urgent situation.
Last Wednesday a member of my group of volunteers received a message requesting help trapping a mother cat and her new kittens. They were all living in an abandoned car on Case Court.
A few members were available to help so we drove out to see what could be done. There were a lot of unaltered cats out there. But, we were focusing on the Mom and her babies. They needed to be in a safer place.
The plan was to trap the Mom and find a foster home through one of the amazing local rescues. Get the babies socialized then adopted, and after the kittens are weaned, get Mom spayed and returned to her colony knowing that she will no longer add to the population out there.
We set 3 traps. We got the Mom and her 4 kittens as well as another adult cat. I drove the Mom & kittens up to a foster home in Napa that night. Instead of releasing the other cat, we chose to keep him overnight and bring to Napa Humane in the morning to take advantage of the feral spay/neuter services they provide. I got my son ready for school and rushed to get there by 9am, feral drop off time.
I was turned away. I was told they only had one spot for a feral that day and it had already been taken. I then asked can you please explain your policy to me? What I learned was not only frustrating, but not reflected on their website or in the Napa shelter’s website about their Community Cat Program.
At Napa Humane, there are no allotted slots for ferals anymore, none. The only way a feral cat gets in is if a domestic cat appointment gets canceled or is a no-show. Domestic cat appointments are booked solid through July. Making it even more difficult to get services for ferals.
And, the decision whether there is space or not to take a feral doesn’t take place until 9am day of. There is no way to plan in advance. There is no guarantee that even if I have a trapped cat, have money or voucher in hand, and wait in line, that I’ll be able to get my trapped cat seen.
In the past they took 10 ferals per day, no appointments but walk-in, first-come, first-served.
They had their own allotted feral drop off time. We still didn’t know if we would get in or not, but it was worth a try. Then they changed to appointments only, then back to walk-ins only, limit 1 feral per household. Do we know why this policy changed when these services are needed now more than ever?
On Napa Humane’s website it states they ‘will do our best to fit the cat into that surgery day, but at times we may need to hold the cat overnight and place onto surgery the next day.' This was not offered to me. I asked and was told it is no longer their policy either. They do not hold cats, feral or otherwise.
That morning I left Napa Humane, headed back to American Canyon not really sure what to do.
I had already wasted hours of my time and gas.
Plus, releasing this cat back to its colony, unaltered, seemed extremely irresponsible.
I reached out to my group for advice. One member reached out to the local rescue who contacted us in the first place to see if they had any suggestions. Thankfully they used their limited resources to get this cat into a private vet in Napa to get neutered. This is not an ideal situation or one to take advantage of. Their resources are so thin already.
I wasn’t able to make a return trip to Napa but thankfully another member could. So drive back to Napa to drop the cat off at Silverado Vet. Then back again the next day to pick it up, house him overnight and then back to Case Court to release the now neutered cat. In all, we volunteers ended up driving 50 miles over the course of three days to get this one cat neutered.
There are hundreds of cats being born every day that need this service done. I made the time to do this because it's important to me. I know most people won’t go through this hassle.
So our population of community cats is growing in two ways now:
• lost or abandoned pet cats: lost/stray cats are no longer accepted at Napa County Animal Shelter and held for owner pickup or adoption if unclaimed • breeding free-roaming cats: Napa County Animal Shelter has not secured any allocated access for spay/neuter services at Napa Humane
Recently there has been a huge cry for help on both American Canyon Facebook groups as well as Nextdoor. People are seeing roaming pregnant cats or finding kittens in their yards.
Community members aren’t sure what to do, so they ask for help publicly.
What do we tell these people asking for help?
Thank you for caring, but there are no services to help with this problem in our city? This just leads to frustration and then people turning a blind eye.
Unfortunately our one local vet does not see feral cats let alone provide low cost, accessible services for them. In fact he has one of the highest spay costs in the valley.
American Canyon residents are desperate for help. If Napa Humane is no longer an option we need to find a new one immediately.
Thank you for hearing my concerns,
Michelle Leighty