A local shelter is shedding light on Chatham-Kent's (CK) stray cat problem.
Wandering Whiskers Cat Rescue, located in Thamesville, has been open for a little under a year and has already rehomed roughly 500 CK stray cats.
“We moved here in 2021 and I immediately started volunteering with an organization Pet and Wildlife Rescue here in Chatham and just by volunteering with them and keeping our ears and eyes open in the community, we realized very quickly that this area, not only of CK, but in the Southern Ontario due to the warm weather and kind of the heavy farming community that there was an urgent need for a rescue trap-neuter-return (TNR) program,” said Misty Bass, Founder of Wandering Whiskers Cat Rescue.
Bass explained that they have taken in 817 cats, 532 of which were female, to get them spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and ready for their forever family.
The overpopulation of stray cats causes backlogs in local shelters, according to Bass, and costs the government unnecessary money.
“We've potentially prevented 95,760 kittens being born just to date, which is a good amount of the flood that was going in there, and that's just huge on tax-paying dollars too, because if we can get these populations under control, tax-paying dollars don't have to go to try and have animal welfare services and the shelter facilities, and all the other stuff that we end up paying for,” said Bass.
Bass, originally from Alberta, added that there is one principal way for the community to help reduce the stray cat population.
She discussed the importance of being aware of the stray cat population and its colonies.
“A big one is people staying on top of wandering kitties and colonies forming, phoning us when the first kitty shows up, not the first kitty with seven babies and then 11 and then 27,” Bass added.
The founder estimates that CK currently has a stray cat population in the “tens of thousands," but she believes her rescue could drastically change those numbers.
“If we can all come together as a community and get on top of it and tackle it, it's doable to reduce that population very, very, very much,” Bass continued.
Donations to the Wandering Whiskers Cat Rescue, as well as pictures of their available cats, can be found on their website.
