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A plea for cats and kittens

Surrey Community Cat Coalition launches fundraising campaign for National Feral Cat Day
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The Surrey Community Cat Coalition is asking for help to provide veterinary care for cats they care for.

The Surrey Community Cat Coalition is launching a fundraising campaign on Sunday, Oct. 16 – National Feral Cat Day – for spay/neuter surgery and medical treatment for feral and stray cats in Surrey.

The lives of these cats and their kittens are grim.

Without help from the community, they are likely to suffer and die because of hunger, lack of shelter and exposure to extreme weather, illness and injuries (such as puncture wounds, broken bones, and loss of eye or limb from being attacked by other cats, racoons, and coyotes or from being hit by cars), and lack of medical care.

One cat who was helped by the community is Polly (photo at left).

When he was rescued from under a vacant house in Surrey, Polly was incredibly thin, dirty, and disheveled.

He had puncture wounds all over his body, an abscess on his cheek, and infections on his nose and under his eye that were eating his skin away.

Polly was very old and had only two rotten teeth left. He needed his wounds cleaned and topical and oral antibiotics every day for weeks before his skin could heal.

Polly is just one of nearly 2,000 homeless and abandoned cats who are rescued off the streets of Surrey every year by caring volunteers who work tirelessly to help the animals.

“We rescue kittens and cats from the streets, old buildings, sheds, industrial lots, boats, and even car engines,” said Mona Boucher, volunteer trapper with the Coalition. “They are malnourished and have infections, injuries, anemia... the list goes on.

"A stray or feral mom cat spends all her energy having, protecting, and trying to feed her kittens. Not all the kittens make it by the time we get the call to trap them. They starve to death because their mama could not find enough food to produce milk or feed them, or because their mom was killed trying to protect them.”

One reason for the high number of homeless cats in Surrey is that many pet owners cannot afford the cost of spay/neuter, and their cats reproduce over and over.

There are not enough people who have or can find pet-friendly housing to adopt all these cats, so they end up being dumped on the streets and left to fend for themselves. Eventually, they become a cat like Polly – old, unloved, and near death. But as more and more cats get fixed through spay/neuter, reproduction will stop and alleviate the overpopulation of homeless cats in Surrey in a humane way.

That is why the Surrey Community Cat Coalition is asking the public to help.

“If at least 500 people donated just $10 – which is less than most people spend on coffee in a week – to our spay/neuter program, we would reach our immediate goal of $5,000 in no time,” said Lubna Ekramoddoullah, director of the Surrey Community Cat Coalition. “We could prevent at least 40 cats from bringing helpless kittens into the world. They wouldn’t be at risk for the pain and suffering that our volunteers see every day.”

To help make a difference in the lives of these cats, donate at youcaring.com/SurreyCats

Donations can also be dropped off at Pet Food ‘N More, (#400, 7380 King George Blvd.) on Oct. 15 and 16 from 12-4 pm (the store open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.).