At a recent meeting of the San Francisco Animal Control and Welfare Commission, it was clear that a controversial change in how the San Francisco SPCA and the City’s municipal shelter, Animal Care and Control, handle feral cats is eroding support for both organizations.
I wrote last month about the organizations’ new policy to leave feral cat moms and their kittens in the wild until the young are weaned, rather than bring them to foster homes or the SPCA’s feral cat nursery, as had been done for years. Feral cat advocates worry that this change in policy will result in the deaths of many kittens who would otherwise have been saved and adopted into loving homes.
The advocates packed the Commission’s meeting room. Every seat was taken, with a few people even sitting on the floor along the walls. Neither the SPCA nor Animal Care and Control had consulted with these people, who work day in and day out with feral cats, before deciding to change the policy. The volunteers’ decades of experience had simply been ignored.