By Mickey Zeldes  March 4, 2010

What would spring in an animal shelter look like if there wasn’t a daily influx of surplus kittens?

Making that dream a reality was the goal of the recent county-wide Fixin’ Felines for Free event. On Saturday, Feb. 20, 435 cats were sterilized at five different clinics in a marathon-type event to reduce the number of cats coming into shelters this coming spring. Of those 435 cats, 193 were females. If each cat had only one litter of kittens this year (cats can have up to three litters, if they get busy right away) and they had just four kittens in each litter (we have seen litters with up to eight) that would be 772 fewer babies competing for available homes. What a success!

Our shelter was one of the clinic sites and we did surgery on 60 cats that day in addition to transporting 20 cats to local clinics for surgery. I don’t know if you can visualize 60 cat carriers stacked up but it was quite a site - and made for a busy day.

We are grateful to the veterinarians who volunteered their time to do this event - it couldn’t have happened without their participation. Dr. Bruce Bell, who came out of retirement to help out, as well as Dr. Sharon Johnson of the Washington Square Vet Clinic in Petaluma, and Dr. Roger Klein, who is our shelter’s regular spay/neuter vet, all worked long shifts snipping and stitching.

Dr. Jereb of North Park Vet Clinic and Dr. Farhart at RP Vet Clinic took in cats at their facility for surgeries. All told, over 30 veterinarians participated in some way for this event in addition to numerous veterinary technicians and hundreds of support volunteers - too many to name but we couldn’t have done it without all the help.

We had a wonderful crew of volunteers at our shelter - starting at 7:30 in the morning getting ready to do check in. Then every cat that was dropped off needed to be health checked - weighed, collared, temperature taken, sexed (only two “males” turned out to be females), scanned for a microchip, and given some pre-meds in preparation for surgery. That alone was quite a task.

Boys were separated from girls and taken to different operating rooms. Thanks to VIP, a mobile veterinary service, who donated microchips, distemper and rabies vaccines, every cat was vaccinated and micro-chipped as they came out of surgery.

In addition, at least at our clinic, thanks to the support of the Animal Shelter League, every cat was treated with advantage, and those with tapeworms or earmites received treatment. These kitties got the works - a full makeover, so to speak. The day ended at 7 p.m. when the last cat was returned to their grateful owner.

Thank you to Round Table Pizza, Mountain Mike’s Pizza, Sonoma Bagels, and Safeway Deli for donating food to support our crew during the long day. We appreciate the support of the Animal Care Center who loaned us a portable anesthetic machine so we could be more efficient and Butler Animal Supplies for donating all kinds of supplies for this event. Of course we thank our major sponsor - the Community Foundation’s Salatko Animal Welfare fund for making this event possible.

It was an incredibly exhausting day but the satisfaction that comes with knowing our workload may be reduced during the dreaded kitten season made it all worthwhile. There are plans to keep the momentum going, especially since there were several hundred calls to the appointment line that were too late for this event. We want to help everyone who is responsible enough to want to get their cat fixed.

If just a little help will do, we have the FAIRE vouchers for $30 off the cost available at our shelter - just come in during our regular hours to get one. With all the programs available in our county to assist with altering, we’re working hard to make our dream of a home for every kitten a reality this year!