June 30, 2008

A Kansas City group hopes to make their town completely no-kill by 2012. (Pet Pulse Photo by John Parker, Illustration by Tim Mattson)

KANSAS CITY -- More than five and a half million animals will be euthanized this year -- 20,000 of them in Kansas City alone, according to the American Humane Association.

A coalition of animal welfare groups, however, wants to change that and says adoption is not the only answer. That group, known as No More Homeless Pets Kansas City, says it wants a no-kill city by 2012. The organization is a coalition of shelters, rescue groups and volunteers that have helped more than 7,000 animals.

The group says it supports the beliefs of author Nathan Winograd, considered a no-kill pioneer. Winograd’s book, “The Myth Of Pet Overpopulation and the No-Kill Revolution In America” offers a formula to stop the killing of shelter animals.

No More Homeless Pets starts its effort with one can of tuna at a time to entice stray cats.

“The bait we’re using is inexpensive tuna that smells bad to us, but we hope smells good to them,” said Kathy Rodriguez, a volunteer for No More Homeless Pets Kansas City. “If you put it in the open where there’s a lot of people, the cats will not be interested at all.”

Using the right technique with that tuna, volunteers are able to capture a colony of feral cats. Though such cats are wild and leery of strangers, it is still hard for them to resist the tempting smell of food.

Concerned about the colony’s quality of life, residents here say they wanted the cats spayed or neutered and then taken back to where they were found. Every place they called, though, said the cats would have to be euthanized.

“There were a lot of cats that kept having kittens, the kittens kept dying, getting hit by cars, said Shirley Oderkirk, another group volunteer.

That is why No More Homeless Pets Kansas City was contacted.

“This is the first organization that said they would come and get them for free, and do everything to them and bring them back,” said Mike Sims, a local feral cat caretaker. “I praise them a lot.”

The organization says the trapping the cats and spaying or neutering them is one thing, but returning them afterwards is also key.

“Truly the reason behind trap, neuter, return is that these cats are out there now, that is their home," said Gail Longstaff, president of No More Homeless Pets. “What we’re doing is trying to stabilize the population and prevent additional litters being born into it.”

Four days weekly, No More Homeless Pets provides free or low cost spay and neuter clinics for cat and dog owners. Three times annually, volunteers make a big effort to trap dozens of feral cats from throughout the area.

When caught, the cats are anesthetized, weighed, given a medical examination and then spayed or neutered. On the day we visited, more than 80 such surgeries were happening. Each surgically altered cat has the tip of their left ear snipped as a sign that it has been fixed.

Some 50 volunteers are responsible for all the work, with veterinarians and vet school students performing the procedures by donating their time. They are also giving these cats the most human contact they likely will ever experience.

“We look in the faces of these animals that are coming through our clinic today, and we’re knowing that they’re being given a chance of life,” said Longstaff. “Because if they were going to a shelter, the answer would be death.”

For more on Winograd’s work, visit NoKillAdvocacyCenter.org. For more on the organization visit NoMoreHomelessPetsKC.org.

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