Terrebonne, Lafourche animal shelters join project to spay, neuter, vaccinate stray cats

Terrebonne and Lafourche animal shelters are taking part in a multi-parish campaign to help reduce the number of stray cats in the area.

Dubbed "Operation Whiskers," five parishes vaccinated, spayed and neutered stray cats and released them back where they were found. Returning the cats where they were will keep others from moving in.

Hilary Detillier, manager of Lafourche Parish Animal Shelter, said the program began in mid-February and is ongoing.

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"Because the local vets are so backlogged with surgeries, as well as the shelters are backlogged, as well the goal was to try to do all of these community cats very quickly before the Spring and Summer of this year 2022," Detillier said. "It's important because there's just not enough homes for kittens."

"Right now we are housing well over 100 kittens and we can't get them out the door fast enough," she added.

Terrebonne Animal Shelter Director Valerie Robinson said that cats are warm-weather breeders, and can produce litters up to three times in a year.

"The protection is there for any cat that it would come into contact with, whether owned or community," said Robinson. "It's trying to protect the animals that are in the community as well as those that we specifically impact."

Terrebonne Animal Shelter currently houses 99 cats with 61 in foster homes.

Shelters from Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines, Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes took part in Operation Whiskers. Lafourche has conducted about 300 surgeries and Terrebonne has carried out 963.

Animal shelters across America have struggled with rising population numbers. The nonprofit Best Friends Animal Society compiles data on shelters across the nation and ranked Louisiana as the fourth-worst state in its save rate: 78%.

Louisiana saved 76,879 cats and dogs 2021.

A save rate is the number of animals that come into the shelter and is either adopted or returned to where it came. This means those cats that were part of Operation Whiskers will be counted in the rate for this year.

Lafourche currently meets the no-kill standard, which means that the shelter euthanizes 10% or less of its animals. Terrebonne last year was just under the no-kill threshold at 11%. In January it was at 10%, and then hit 3% in February, but currently sits at 16%.

Lafourche and Terrebonne both currently turn away adult cats, but instead of having them breed more kittens in the wild, through the program, they hope to keep the numbers down.

The vaccination portion of the process is to keep diseases down in the area. With so many cats in the area exposed to pathogens, there is the potential for diseases to spread rapidly. By vaccinating these strays it helps prevent this from happening through "herd immunity."

"So the idea behind trap-neuter-return is that the cats will get sterilized, vaccinated and they'll go back to where they came from and therefore they will no longer be reproducing," Detillier said. "Cats are also very territorial animals so those cats that have now been fixed will stay in the area and keep new cats from coming in."

This article originally appeared on The Courier: Local animal shelters trap, neuter, and vaccinate stray cats