Press Room

Press Releases

(ALAMEDA, CA - May 1, 2000). A staggering twenty thousand spay/neuter surgeries have been performed in the past nine months by veterinarians participating in the California Veterinary Medical Association’s Feral Cat Altering Program (FCAP). The 3-year program, which started last August, aimed to reach 20,000 surgeries by the end of its first year. But FCAP doctors have so drastically exceeded expectations the goal was reached on April 28th!! If the past year is an indication of the future, it now appears the number of ferals altered will easily top 100,000. The program is underwritten by a $3.2 million grant from Maddie's Fund.

The California Veterinary Medical Association’s community based approach of recruiting hundreds of its members to spay and neuter feral cats offers a unique new model for humanely controlling feral cat populations.

To date, CVMA has over 830 veterinarians from every region of California participating in the Program. FCAP doctors agree to spay/neuter feral cats brought to them by community residents (generally feral cat colony caregivers.) The surgery is free for the caregivers: the doctors are reimbursed an average of $50 per surgery by CVMA. (Testing for FeLV and vaccinations are not paid for by FCAP.)

"I think the FCAP program is great," says Dr. Marvin Mackie, who has been altering feral cats in his southern California spay/neuter clinics since 1994. "This program gets a lot more doctors involved in altering ferals and really provides the means to change
people’s attitudes about them." Over half of the doctors participating in FCAP had not previously spayed or neutered ferals as part of their practice.

Dr. Orben Pratt of Los Altos Animal Hospital in Long Beach was a case in point. He joined the FCAP Program in October and has altered 125 ferals since. His hospital has the singular distinction of altering the historic 20,000th cat--a 10lb. orange male tabby.

After the cats are spayed or neutered, they’re returned to the caregiver who releases the cat back to his former habitat. The program has been a godsend to feral cat colony caregivers. Taking away the financial burden of the surgery makes it a lot easier for caregivers to bring in more cats.

Currently, the FCAP program is altering feral cats at a rate of 3,500 per month. "I can’t give enough praise to the CVMA doctors--they’re the real heroes in this story," says Maddie’s Fund Veterinary Consultant, Dr. Laurie Peek. "And for having the courage to help animals in a radically new way, CVMA has proven once again why it’s a national leader in the veterinary community."

"This program is definitely getting national attention," says CVMA Executive Director Dick Schumacher, DVM. "We’re getting calls from Veterinary Medical Associations all over the country because the program is a win/win for everyone. The public loves it, the caregivers love it, the humane community loves it--and the veterinarians are excited about expanding the ways they can help the animals in their own community."