Japan: reducing unwanted pets

[Guest guest]

The Yomiuri Shimbun Mar. 29, 2007

 

Kobe-based NPO fights cat overpopulation

Animal Rescue System Fund reducing unwanted pets with spaying and

neutering campaign

Hiroyuki Ueba

 

The Animal Rescue System Fund in Kobe has an ambitious goal: to halve

within five years the number of cats destroyed at a municipal government

facility in Kita Ward.

 

The facility currently euthanizes about 3,200 cats a year. Established

by Managing Director Hiro Yamasaki and others in 2004, the fund is a

non-profit organization working to control the number of stray cats by

providing low-cost spaying and neutering.

 

Although a number of organizations across the country provide shelters

for stray cats and help find them homes, the fund is the nation's only

facility that employs a veterinarian to exclusively spay and neuter

stray cats. The fund's veterinary clinic opened in November.

 

" I want to reduce the number of stray cats, " Yamasaki said. " But

finding homes for them isn't nearly enough. It's impossible to keep up

with the cats' reproduction cycles. "

 

Because the organization aims to control the number of stray cats, and

it responds to requests from local residents troubled by strays, the

organization asks for donations of 5,000 yen to treat a male cat and

8,000 yen for a female, much lower than the 20,000 yen or more charged

at ordinary veterinary clinics for similar surgical procedures.

 

To increase its presence in the city, on March 1, Animal Rescue System

Fund launched a campaign to accept stray cats for neutering and spaying

at the clinic at a lower cost than usual, giving vaccinations at low

cost and treating a large group of cats in a certain area for smaller

donations. The campaign will continue through the end of May.

 

" Spring is generally regarded as mating season for cats, " Yamasaki said.

" Our campaign is a good opportunity to help make people aware of the cat

overpopulation problem and our recent efforts. "

 

Since the beginning of the campaign on March 1, the organization has

been receiving daily calls for help and has operated on more than 280

cats at the clinic. Yamasaki captures cats every day, treats them with

help of a veterinarian and returns them to their habitats.

 

In one case, at a park in Hyogo Ward, cats were being fed by neighbors

and were mating freely, resulting in a feline population explosion.

Responding to a concerned neighbor's request, Yamasaki trapped 50 cats

in the area for spaying and neutering.

 

To capture cats, Yamasaki uses box traps with cats' favorite foods as

bait. " It takes about 20 to 30 minutes to catch a cat, but I'm sometimes

forced to spend more than an hour to capture a particularly wary one, "

Yamasaki said.

 

Having a full-time veterinarian on staff has enabled the organization to

reduce spaying and neutering costs.

 

" It's impossible to rely on volunteer services by veterinarians of other

animal clinics to systematically control the reproduction of stray cats, "

Yamasaki said.

 

The veterinarian, Sayaka Kurita, employs a faster surgical technique

popular in the United States and Canada but not in Japan. She uses an

ultrathin wire instead of a textile thread, which is generally used in

Japan, after treating the internal genital organs. Because wire is

stronger than thread, she only needs to wrap the organ once, while

thread must be wrapped around at least twice, saving several minutes.

 

" It's a small thing, but it's important because I have to handle many

cats every day, " Kurita said, adding that wire was less likely to cause

allergic reactions in cats.

 

Surgery takes just a few minutes for a male cat and about seven minutes

for a female with about 10 more minutes to anesthetize a cat.

 

" So it takes only half a day to finish one cycle of TNR--trapping,

neutering and returning a cat, " Yamasaki said.

 

The organization chiefly spays and neuters stray cats and provides no

other medical services. However, due to misunderstandings, even before

the clinic opened in autumn, the local veterinary medical association

began applying pressure, concerned that its businesses could be

adversely affected, Yamasaki said.

 

Shelters, adoption insufficient

 

Yamasaki says neutering and spaying are the keys to effectively

controlling the number of cats and reducing those destroyed by local

governments, not more shelter and adoption campaigns.

 

A cat reaches reproductive age at about 6 months old. It can bear

kittens three times a year at most, with four to five kittens per litter.

 

" You can easily imagine how the cat population grows over a very short

period of time, even with only one pair. Yamasaki said. " It's impossible

to find new homes for all of these cats.

 

" So to control the number, it's important to sterilize the whole

community of cats in a selected area at once, " he said. " Sterilizing 70

percent of the cats in an area dramatically reduces the numbers of

destroyed cats. This has been empirically and mathematically proven in

North America. I want to create the same situation here in Kobe.

 

" The most important thing is to prevent the first litter from being

born. "

 

According to Yamasaki, many shelters were established in the United

States and Canada until the 1980s, and there are now more than 5,000

shelters in the United States. However, it was discovered that they

were not effectively dealing with overpopulation.

 

Instead, low-cost neutering and spaying were introduced by animal

protection groups and veterinarians in the 1990s. Neutering and spaying

campaigns have been launched and supported by private donations and are

approved by the American Veterinarian Medical Association.

 

Yamasaki personally understands the ineffectiveness of shelters

because he helped save abandoned cats and dogs after the Great Hanshin

Earthquake in 1995 and operated one under his previous organization,

Animal Rescue Kobe, until 2005.

 

" I sheltered more than 1,000 cats and dogs, but the rescue requests

never stopped, " he said.

 

While involved in rescue activities, he learned about animal welfare

practices in North America and decided in 1996 to establish an

organization to employ its own veterinarian and provide neutering and

spaying at low cost within a decade.

 

He invited Marvin Mackie, a Los Angeles-based spaying and neutering

specialist tackling pet overpopulation, to Japan to lecture on his

activities at the Japanese Board of Veterinary Practitioners in

September 2004.

 

Mackie and other organizations in the United States and Canada support

Yamasaki's organization by instructing its veterinarians and helping

with its overall management.

 

As Yamasaki knew how difficult it could be to recruit veterinarians,

he approached students in veterinary schools and has been taking them

since 1998 to see the facilities in the United States and Canada, where

mass spaying and neutering are used to effectively control the number

of cats and dogs.

 

" The veterinary community is very small and guildlike, and those who

try to do something different are pressured by the others. So I thought

it was important to find willing veterinarians while they were still

students, " he said.

 

Kurita, the organization's current vet, was among those who visited

Canada in 2001 as a member of a study tour organized by Yamasaki. She

worked for about four years at an animal clinic in Osaka Prefecture

after graduation, but after Yamasaki approached her in October last

year, she decided to join his project.

 

" I didn't expect his project would become a reality when I joined his

study tour, but because it seems the most effective way to solve cat

overpopulation, I decided to be a part of it and help support his

claims, " she said.

 

Yamasaki said, " I want to fundamentally solve the overpopulation

problem, hoping that our approach will be employed in other parts of

Japan, too. "

 

The Animal Rescue System Fund is requesting donations to support its

activities. To contact the organization, visit its Web site at

http://www.animalrescue-sf.org/ or call (078) 856-3229 between 9 a.m.

and 5 p.m. from Tuesday to Saturday in Japanese or English.

 

 

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