Controlling cat numbers the humane way

Mary Peng with some cats at a local shelter in Beijing.
The small lobby of the International Center for Veterinary Services (ICVS) is transformed into a classroom, with two lines of chairs and a laptop, as a seminar on the Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) program for stray cats gets underway.

The audience is small, with about 15 people, mostly students from international schools, but Mary Peng, manager of ICVS, spares no efforts to detail the TNR program, with a vivid power point presentation and handouts.

This is one of ICVS' routine seminars on this non-profit program, that Peng established in 2007 right after she co-founded the ICVS.

The idea of creating a veterinary hospital and follow-up program originated from a cat, Boo Boo, that Peng adopted in Beijing more than 15 years ago.

The cat came to her when she was an advertising director with Dentsu, Young &Rubicam in China, and followed her to the United States when she went to earn an MBA from Columbia University, and back to China in 2002 when she joined McKinsey &Company. Boo Boo is still with her in Beijing.

When adopting Boo Boo, "I knew that this adorable little kitten would one day become an elderly cat and would likely need medical care as she aged, just like what I had experienced with the medical care needs of my parents as they got older," says Peng. This recognition of the need for a full-service animal hospital and pet care facility is what led to the founding of ICVS in 2007.

"In 2003, during the SARS outbreak, I noticed that the number of cats I was caring for increased dramatically in just a few months, from 4-5 cats to over 20 cats, because of the erroneous belief that SARS could be transmitted to humans from domestic animals.

"Most of these abandoned cats had not been neutered or spayed, so they had kittens, leading to even greater numbers of stray cats in my neighborhood."

At first, she wanted to rescue all the cats, but soon learned there was little help available.

"When I was in New York, I learnt about TNR programs from a friend with Neighborhood Cats," says Peng. Neighborhood Cats was formed in 1999 to create an awareness of the severe feral and stray cat overpopulation crisis and promote and establish a trap-neuter-return program as the preferred method of feral and stray cat control.

When ICVS officially opened in 2007, the cats TNR Program became established as the first non-profit program under which the hospital offered its facilities and services to provide safe and high-quality surgery and rabies vaccinations for stray cats.

"TNR is a relatively new concept in animal population control and it will take time to educate everyone, including animal control authorities, cat colony care providers and the general public, on the humane principles and benefits of TNR," says Peng.

The most important aspects of the program are to "provide fact-based information and education to the cat colony care providers. And the bottom line is that cat care providers can then implement TNR programs in their communities".

"We send volunteers to help them trap the cats, bring them to ICVS for surgery and vaccinations, and then help return the cats to their colonies when they have recovered. The cat care provider continues to look after and care for the cats and they can trap and bring in any new cats that appear in their colonies."

So far the program has been extended to the stray and feral cat colonies at the United States and New Zealand Embassies, and is receiving many more inquiries.

Source: China Daily