The Bakersfield Animal Care Center, Bark Avenue Foundation and Wings of Rescue announced they have received a generous grant from the St. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center in Madison, New Jersey to provide free spay/neuter services for pets belonging to homeless and low income individuals and families.
The first clinic will be held today, Monday, January 16, at the Bakersfield Animal Care Center on Mount Vernon Avenue. This will be a targeted test program to help eventually launch a wide-scale program.
"We cannot rely on adoptions and transports alone to stop shelter overcrowding and end shelter euthanasia," said shelter director Julie Johnson, "In seven years an unaltered cat will produce 2,900 kittens. We have to address the root of the problem, rather than treating it with Band-Aids."
Additionally, the St. Hubert's grant will be used to alter cats from the city's feral cat colonies in an innovative targeted trap and release program that the City of Bakersfield Animal Control Services Division identified as an urgent target area.
"We are so pleased that St. Hubert's and Bark Avenue Foundation, two fabulous organizations who are recognized as champions of spay/neuter programs, have teamed up with us to provide the resources to finally try to solve the problem rather than clean up afterwards," Ric Browde of Wings of Rescue said.
