MASON, Mich. — Love them or hate them, cats are everywhere!
That’s why Heidi Williams the Director of the Ingham County Animal Control is on a mission to do something about controlling the cat population.
“It's bad, it's really bad," says Williams. "There are too many cats, there aren't enough homes, there aren’t enough fosters, there are not enough resources, not enough shelter space, and we have to do something about it! And instead of continuing to treat the symptoms of the disease, we need to get to the root cause of curing the disease, and that's spaying and neutering."
Williams estimates there are 50 to 75,000 community cats in Ingham County alone.
“We have spaying and neutering low-cost options. We have a voucher program. There's lots of options to get your pet spayed and Neutered. We are starting a free trap neuter return program for Ingham County residents. So, if you have a lot of cats in your community, that are doing what cats do, yelling and fighting and reproducing, we want to stop that we want to help you fix that problem. So, you just got to give us a call and get on our schedule and we'll fix them for free.”
The Ingham County Animal Control is also partnering with the Joanie Bernard Foundation… a non-profit dedicated to creating a no-kill nation for cats. Monica Tarant is the Foundation spokesperson.
“Our latest campaign is called the “Great Debate”. The premise is that even if you love cats or you hate cats, the answer is the same; that life is still better when we spay and neuter them. So, if you want less free-roaming cats because you don't like them, we still need to spay and neuter them. If you love cats and you want to make their lives better; we need to spay and neuter them. So, it's one thing that we can all agree on is that spaying, and neutering is the answer.”
One way they do that is by funding a movement called "Give Them Ten" and creating unique and catchy, public service announcements like this one featuring Scooter the neutered cat.
Tarant says the commercials are working.
“The reaction is overwhelmingly positive. People turn those commercials off that make them sad with animals in cages. That isn’t resonating. We took a different approach made people laugh. So many people sing along with this with the song scooter song, but everywhere that scooter goes children flocked to him. He's very approachable and kids love them of course. So that's the next generation of animal welfare advocates.”
To learn more about the Give Them Ten Movement or the Ingham County Animal Control's Catch and Release program, visit https://ac.ingham.org/
We want to say thank you to the Ingham County Animal Control and the Give Them Ten Movement this weeks Good Neighbor
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