Marian Pekar, My Nine Lives Video Game
May 26, 2020
Karen Little, Alley Cat Advocates
June 2, 2020
Are you worried about the colonies that you take care of and about all of the kittens being born out in the community, especially when we don’t have access to the spay/neuter resources that we have normally have? While some parts of the United States are opening up, some are still closed or very limited in the services that they can offer.
The folks at Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs (ACC&D) seem to think that we don’t have to worry so much about this time period where we aren’t getting the surgeries that we would normally. In this video narrated by ACC&D executive director Joyce Briggs, she is so calm in her presentation that I almost believe that things will be alright.
Upon further consideration, however, I do have a concern about the modeling ACC&D is using to try to convince us that this will be okay. Their model makes the assumption that 75% of cats in the sample colony are sterilized over a four-year period. I simply don’t think many colonies across the nation are at this point.
Basically, the authors of the video want us to take comfort in the idea that if your colony is at around 75% sterilization, you should be okay with a pause of several months. But this case analysis is for just one colony. I wonder what would happen if they ran the numbers on a colony that had no history of TNR? That is where things get interesting.
The ACC&D video’s focus is on a scenario of one colony when the fact is that that many organizations cover several colonies and they have new colonies coming to their attention as well. There is no stopping the trapping list from building up. I heard just this week about a three-day spay-a-thon in Ohio where 178 cats were spayed. Of those 178, 120 were pregnant. Should I be worried now?
ACC&D should consider running a few more models so we can rest easy.
