Cats Committee needs year end support to help homeless felines

In 2010 the Côte Saint-Luc Cats Committee was established. I had been requesting  a Trap Neuter Release and Adopt Program in CSL for many years. Finally,    Luc City Councillor Mike Cohen seized the idea and worked tirelessly to get the rest of the elected officials  on board. Upon asking their constituents whether the homeless cat situation was of importance,  they discovered that  “yes,” their constituents were concerned about the cats  for many reasons.

Côte Saint-Luc City Council gave us a $5,000 grant. Canadian Pacific Railway matched that last year and we did some fundraising. Now completing our second year, we  a have trapped and neutered over 100 cats.  This has prevented the birth of over  15,000 thousand  kittens.

These adorable cats were trapped and adopted.

Just as we thought we were stopping for the year, as we have  depleted our budget, we were made aware  of a situation of an elderly woman who had been feeding cats for years.  Because of health issues, she recently  found herself in a facility  with  no one to feed the 12 cats that were coming to her home. 

This woman did not believe in neutering these cats. She felt that the cats would get  disoriented and lost.  This is not so.  It is important to keep the cats inside until they are clear-headed after any surgery, but the statistics has not proven her theory to be so.

I do not know how many she started off with, but now we are dealing with 12.

Volunteers from the our committee and other concerned citizens are helping in the feeding of these cats, but they must be neutered, vaccinated and de-wormed.

Aside from that, there were four kittens spotted  at  Maimonides Hospital  in Côte Saint-Luc last week and I just received a call from a  young woman on Wallenburg who has seen a male, female and three kittens near her home. The calls are not just from CSL, they are from all over the island.

We need to be able to continue the work that is being done to neuter, vaccinate and de-worm these cats. That takes money, something we do not have.  Every one of us is a volunteer, all the money we receive  goes to the care of these cats.

We ask  you to donate and help us fund raise so that we can continue try to reduce the misery of kittens being born outside and the perpetual overpopulation of home-less, community cats.

Please send your donations to Educhat. You can do so online at  www.educhat.ca by going to the donate tab.

Shelley Schecter

Educhat and Côte Saint-Luc Cats Committee