Program a lifesaver for area's stray cats

Animal welfare organizations are launching a broad new effort to sterilize and release stray cats, which could save animals' lives and save Charleston County more than $40,000 in costs associated with euthanizing and incinerating them.

Currently, most free-roaming cats, as animal groups prefer to call them, are euthanized if they are captured and brought to the Charleston Animal Society, which contracts with Charleston County.

Proposed ordinances in the county and in the city of Charleston instead would call for free-roaming cats that are healthy to be spayed or neutered, microchipped, vaccinated and ear-tipped, then released where they were found. City Council gave initial approval to its ordinance Tuesday night.

A grant from the ASPCA would pay for the program.

"The good part for us is that we won't have to euthanize the cat, which makes us sick to do, if it's healthy and it's not wild," said Charles Karesh of the Charleston Animal Society.

Last year, the Charleston Animal Society euthanized about 2,400 free-roaming cats, Karesh said. He estimates 1,500 would have qualified for the proposed spay/neuter and release program.

"Right now, a lot of people who deal with feral cat colonies are hesitant to call animal control, because they know they will be euthanized," he said. "With this program, we hope that more will call."

Cats would be euthanized if they were caught by animal control three times, despite the expense associated with vaccinating, microchipping and sterilizing them the first time they were caught.

"It's a three-strikes-and-you're-out thing," said Charleston County Councilman Elliott Summey, who introduced the free-roaming cat ordinance on behalf of the animal groups affiliated with Humane Net. "It's not going to get picked up again unless it's causing problems."

Humane Net affiliates are using part of a three-year, $600,000 grant from the ASPCA to pay for the spay/neuter and release program.

The grant is part of the ASPCA's "Mission: Orange" initiative to increase the number of animals who leave the shelter system alive.

Charleston is one of 10 communities nationwide to receive funding. Summey said the initiative could help control the free-roaming cat population. He said a number of areas have significant feral cat populations, and he cited Isle of Palms as an example.

Like many parts of the Lowcountry, Isle of Palms does have several colonies of feral cats, Town Administrator Linda Tucker said.

"There is a benefit from the cats because they help keep the rodent population down," she said. "We have some groups of people who have been good about taking them on as their own project."

Karesh said the initiative to spay or neuter, vaccinate, and release free-roaming cats should start in 2010.

In Charleston, Councilwoman Yvonne Evans introduced and ordinance to support the program.

"Those cats are all over the place," she said. "There's a history of them being uncared for and reproducing."