Opinion - Columns - Bill Morem

Published: Saturday, Aug. 15, 2009

Bill Morem: It’s raining cats and … snakes?

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You just never know what you’re going to run into at County Animal Services.

For instance, a guy recently turned in a 6-foot-long Monitor lizard. This carnivorous cousin to the Komodo dragon was living with the fellow … in his car. Sweet dreams on that one.

Over the years, Animal Services has been the temporary home of 50 tarantulas, Madagascar pythons, poisonous snakes, a pet skunk, ferrets, monkeys, horses, goats, potbelly pigs, an ill emu (that had to be put down), a chinchilla-like animal called a degu and fighting cocks.

Want a couple of doves? They’re adoptable at Animal Services right now.

“It’s a Noah’s Ark of sorts,” says Dr. Eric Anderson, director of Animal Services. “We had an alligator a while back. It’s part of what makes the place interesting and challenging. For instance, try finding a place for 13 8-foot-long snakes.”

Although you may not know what you’re going to run into at Animal Services, there’s one species that’s never a surprise resident: cats.

Every year around this time, warm and fuzzy kittens wash over the Central Coast and end up at the pound. Animal Services is now sheltering or fostering more than 165 cats, with about 130 of those being kittens. Last month alone, the shelter saw a 60 percent increase in its kitten population.

It’s an annual phenomenon that’s based on the fact that unspayed cats can have as many as three litters a year. And reproductive cycles being what they are, summer is one of those kitten seasons.

The shelter and volunteers with groups such as Woods Humane Society, HART, North County Humane Society and Pounce are working feverishly to get these kittens adopted. They’ve been holding Adopt-A-Pet events each Saturday at Lemos Feed in Arroyo Grande and Wal-Mart in Atascadero. A Kittenpalooza adoption event was held at the shelter Aug. 1, and another is tentatively planned for Aug. 29.

Adopt a kitten and it will have all of its vaccinations, be microchipped, spayed or neutered, will get a free vet check and a new collar and ID tag. If not adopted, the consequences are terminal.

It should be noted that the good folks at the shelter do a Herculean job of trying not to euthanize their charges. In 2003, no adoptable pets (those that were healthy and not dangerous) were euthanized.

In the past couple of years, according to Anderson, the shelter has managed to keep the euthanasia rate to a low 1 percent of adoptables.

The overall save rate in San Luis Obispo County is about 85 percent; most counties throughout the state save about half of their adoptable animals.

So they’re trying really hard to get pets retrieved by their owners or adopted out.

“We’re just in a situation where we only have a certain amount of space and the flow of animals never ends,” says Anderson.

Some of the animals are strays and brought in by the public or Animals Services officers. Others are simply dropped off by those who can no longer take care of them.

Resources are stretched. The animals get stressed through overcrowding, leading to suppressed immune systems and infections, which can put other animals at risk, Anderson adds.

With a budget of $2.6 million a year, and perhaps an additional $50,000 in private donations, 5,000 animals go through the shelter each year.

And although dog owners tend to redeem their dogs about 35 percent of the time, cat owners look for their lost pets at the shelter less than five percent of the time.

“People aren’t stepping up to the plate for their cats as they are for their dogs,” says Anderson.

The reasons for this cattitude vary. Many people think that when Fluffy disappears, it’s a) run away and been hit by a car; b) it’s gone over three streets to be readopted by that nice little old blue-haired lady who will feed Fluffy filet of mountain trout and yogurt-covered raisins; c) coyotes or other predators got it; d) all of the above.

But the bottom line is that we’re simply allowing our unaltered toms and unspayed tabbies to run free, continuing to procreate another generation that may end up crowded into a shelter while looking down the barrel of euthanasia.

To help stem the tide, check out Anderson’s Ark. You may just find the feline(s) that will fill out your family.

Reach Bill Morem at bmorem@thetribunenews.com or 781-7852.