Low-cost neutering, Part #2

The ANIMAL PEOPLE, MSPCA, and NPA surveys asked somewhat different questions, which may also account for differences in the answers. The biggest difference may be in the initial assumptions of the surveyors. ANIMAL PEOPLE didn't even try to find negligence: negligent people wouldn't be likely to return a written questionaire, and even somewhat negligent people tend to have an excuse. Our goal was not to pin blame, but rather to find the problems and then find ways to eliminate them.

Further, ANIMAL PEOPLE suspects that some genuine reasons for failure to neuter are mistaken for excuses by many humane organizations. For instance, the MSPCA explained the greater importance of cost and convenience in deciding whether to fix cats as a result of anti-cat bias. ANIMAL PEOPLE found even more concern over the cost of neutering cats than the MSPCA ­­but we also found substantial cause for it. First, cat-owners who have not neutered all of their animals tend to have more cats. The typical low-cost client has 29% more cats than the average pet owner. This means more neutering is neededed. Both the MSPCA study and the ANIMAL PEOPLE study show that women take the primary responsibility for neuteringg animals. Yet women on average earn just 69% as much money as men and are 5.7 times more likely to head single-parent families with dependent children. Of female-headed households in the U.S., 35% live below the poverty line, including 51% of those with children under age 18 and 61% of of those with children under age six. Women over age 65 who live alone are also disproportionately likely to be poor. In short, if either female heads of households or elderly women have cats, they may justly wonder where the cost of neutering will come from, even if they agree 100% that neutering is needed. Many of the written comments on the ANIMAL PEOPLE questionaires, most offered by women, told stories of real hardship.

Curiously, no study yet has looked at differences in pet ownership by sex, but this may have a bearing on neutering practices. In addition to the MSPCA and ANIMAL PEOPLE data above, suggesting women are from half again to three times more likely than men to take animals for neutering, both a 1981 study of cat-feeders in Brooklyn done by Carol Haspel and Robert Calhoon and the 1992 ANIMAL PEOPLE nationwide survey of cat-feeders found that women are more than four times as likely as men to feed and adopt homeless cats. These findings confirm greater female empathy toward cats and illustrate as well a major but little recognized means of cat acquisition. A 1987 survey of people who surrendered animals to the Missoula Humane Society reported that 55% of the cats who had been kept as pets were adopted as strays. That study covered only failed adoptions­­but three other studies have found a noteworthy number of former strays in the pet cat population. Rudy Nasser in a 1981 study of pet ownership in Las Vegas found that 11% of the pet cats were adopted as strays; the MPCA found that 20% of pet cats in the greater Boston area were adopted as strays; and the National Pet Alliance found that 32% of pet cats in the Santa Clara Valley were adopted as strays.

Hidden obstacles

Anti-pet overpopulation crusaders also tend to dismiss as mere excuses the complaints of about 17% of people who haven't neutered dogs and 47% of people who haven't neutered cats that they either can't get transportation to neutering clinics or can't get to the clinics during regular business hours. Instead there is a tendency to see the difference in the frequency with which dog owners and cat owners make these complaints as further presumed proof that fewer cat owners really care about their animals.

An alternative view is that the middle class background of many humane workers blinds them to the reality of multi-generational poverty. There simply aren't many ves in poor neighborhoods. Poor people are less likely to own cars. People who hold low-wage jobs are not only less able to afford neutering, but also less able to afford the loss of wages if they take time off work to get an animal neutered, and are easily replaced if they do take time off. These factors are more important for cat owners than dog owners because while neither dogs nor cats are allowed on most public transportation, one can walk a dog several miles to a neutering clinic if necessary. Walking miles with a cat, even in a carrier, is rather difficult, especially if one is female and vulnerable in a bad neighborhood; obliged to take small children along due to lack of access to alternative care; and/or elderly.

ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett learned the importance of physical access to neutering in early 1992, while coordinating a major cat rescue project in northern Fairfield County, Connecticut. Residents of inner city Bridgeport, she found, were quite receptive to the idea of neutering both their own pets and local ferals. They willingly chipped in to help finance neutering, contributing far more than most residents of nearby upper middle income suburbs. However, the nearest veterinarian who performed low-cost neutering was nearly 10 miles away.

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently described a similar situation in North Philadelphia: following the relocation of the Women's Humane Society to a distant suburb, just three veterinary clinics remain in this whole district. The Women's Humane Society formerly provided discount neutering and emergency pet health care. The neutering program was so successful that over the past decade the shelter intake of homeless animals dropped from 10,000 a year to barely over 3,000. No institution has replaced WHS. Although the Pennsylvania SPCA also serves the area, it is physically remote from most residents. North Philadelphia has more residents, mostly impoverished Afro-Americans, than all but about 20 U.S. cities. Of the three North Philadelphia veterinarians who remain in business, all are reportedly losing money because of frequent break-ins by drug addicts; none advertise widely; and at least one is within a year of retirement. That will leave veterinary care in North Philadelphia at the Third World level. And obviously the rate of neutering locally will drop.

Opinion was split as to whether adequate low-cost neutering was already available in respondents' communities. Among pet owners at large, 64% said yes; 36% said no. Low-cost neutering clients took almost the opposite view: 34% yes, 62% no. Since the samples were not matched by community, both groups might be right. However, people from each group who live in the same community often gave opposing answers, a hint that even where low-cost neutering is readily available, many pet owners don't know about it. There may also be a difference of perception as to what "low-cost" means, especially evident in New Jersey, which has had a well-publicized neutering subsidy program funded by dog licensing for more than a decade. During the past two years the program was temporarily cut back, as funding was diverted to rabies control. Reduced-cost and even free neutering remained available to the most serious hardship cases, but was harder to find for people above the poverty line. Comments from New Jersey sometimes asserted that no low-cost neutering was available locally, as may have been the case for many residents whose incomes are less than half the U.S. median but above the poverty line­­a bracket including just under 10% of the total U.S. population.

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