HANOVER COUNTY, Va. -- A team of volunteers from Furbish Thrift and veterinarians at the Kincheloe South vet clinic were hard at work Thursday afternoon making sure Richmond’s feral cat population stays under control.
"We call this event the Big Fix,” Bill Harrison said.
Harrison is the CEO of the William A. Harrison Jr. Foundation which operates the Furbish Thrift store in Richmond. Harrison says in the year that the thrift store a has been operating it has put on the Big Fix event three times.
"Trappers to go out several nights before this event, trapping the feral cats, bringing them to Furbish Thrift,” Harrison explained. “We put them in our thrift store truck and we bring them here to Hanover to the clinic where they receive health care.”
Once at the clinic the feral cats aren’t just spayed or neutered. Associate Veterinarian Katrina Kollgaard says the cats can receive dental work done, and are treated for parasites and diseases before being reintroduced back into the wild.
"It’s not just fleas, but also infectious diseases and things like that including rabies,” said Kollgaard. "It’s definitely helpful to get these guys as healthy as possible."
Thanks to support from the community, Harrison says Kincheloe is able to provide the procedure for just $40. Harrison says for every $40 donation Furbish Thrift receives will be matched so that more feral cats can be helped.
Furbish Thrift is funding $4,000 to cover expenses of the treatments.
“We matched the $2,000 our donors contributed and Kincheloe is providing low-cost services, which is allowing us to treat so many animals,” stated Laura Cotterman, chair of the William A. Harrison Jr. Foundation.
“It’s a critical part not only are not only trying to control the population population of feral cats, but to stop the spread of diseases,” Harrison said.
"Most of these cats are truly feral — meaning they haven’t had contact with human beings, and so they are not tame and they’re not able to be domesticated,” Kollgaard explained. “They breed very rapidly so this can definitely help to control overpopulation in certain areas because that is definitely a big problem with feral cats."
In fact, Harrison says a cat can produce up to three litters annually with an average of two to five kittens each time. So efforts such as these are critical to controlling feral colonies.
"The people who trap these feral cats, will retrieve them and take them back to the areas where they were trapped," Harrison said. "And that’s the best process to have because these for the most part are cats that are able to be domesticated. They are not people's pets. These are animals that were born in the wild."
Harrison said they expect to fix about 80 cats. Since the inception of the event he estimates nearly 300 cats have been fixed and related back into the wild.
"This is the only time that most of these cats will ever be in a vets office. Probably for their entire lifetimes,” said Harrison.
“This gives them a chance to continue to have happy lives, be a lot more healthy and still be in a situation that has low stress for them as possible and safe for other people,” said Kollgaard.
Harrison says Furbish Thrift has another event planed in April.
“It’s a service that covers so many different areas,” said Harrison. “It’s a very rewarding process that we’re going through and we’ve been very humbled by the support of the community.”
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