STRAY CATS GET TAXPAYER FUNDED HEALTH CARE

(Toledo, Ohio) This story should be heart-warming to animal lovers everywhere. A collaboration of cat-loving groups has set up a clinic, partially funded by Toledo taxpayers, to provide health services to stray cats. It's called Operation Felix.

Since Operation Felix began in July, 2002, the free clinics have spayed or neutered 875 cats. About two-thirds of those cats were pets belonging to people who could not afford the surgery, and the rest were feral cats.

Volunteers use box traps to capture feral cats and then they transport them to the clinic. After they are spayed or neutered and treated for illnesses, the cats are returned to neighborhoods where program organizers know they are being fed.

Steve Serchuk, who helped create Operation Felix, said preventing feral cats from reproducing will reduce their numbers over time, whereas euthanizing stray cats allows other fertile cats to take over the territory.

So the people of Toledo can be assured that their stray cat population is healthy and well fed and capable of defending their territory from invading fertile cat gangs.

It seems to me that a goal of no stray cats would make more sense as opposed to subsidizing an existing population. It also seems likely that a gang of invading cats would easily conquer the cats without nads or motherly instincts.