For years, Oakland Animal Services, the city’s animal shelter, has been the little engine that could. Despite one budget cut after another, the beleaguered staff and volunteers have worked their tails off to keep fulfilling the shelter’s mission: providing refuge and finding homes for cats and dogs that are homeless through no fault of their own.
The cuts just keep on coming, though, and last week the City Council threw in the towel and voted to authorize the shelter to turn away people who have rescued these hapless critters off the streets. The next day, people who showed up at the shelter with cats and dogs they had just rescued were told to take the animals back to where they found them and leave them there.
It’s like Donald Trump suppressing the numbers of COVID-19 pandemic deaths on the theory that if people don’t know about it it’s not a problem. Have the lawmakers considered the effects of this ill-advised decision, though?
Many of these animals have been dumped by their owners, which means they have no clue how to hide from predators — including owls, hawks, falcons, coyotes and the most dangerous animal of all, people — or how to find food for themselves without getting into a deadly fight with raccoons, which will win that battle every time. They eventually starve to death, not to mention freezing in winter and contracting deadly diseases.
The statistics tell us that the average life expectancy of a homeless cat is about two years max, and my own experience feeding feral cats has taught me that this estimate is about right. Homeless dogs might last a year longer, but they’re ultimately doomed too.
Killing them is no answer. Female cats can become pregnant as early as 4 months old, and they potentially can have up to three litters per year — even more in optimal conditions. Each litter is typically four to six kittens, and if they’re not spayed or neutered, one female and her descendants could be responsible for more than 10,000 new cats in just four years and 420,000 in just seven years. The same goes for dogs.
The only answer, of course, is to attack the problem at the supply end, which means preventing those kittens and puppies from being born in the first place. That’s going to cost money, but killing them is far more expensive. You’d have to hire a veritable army to hunt them all down.
So instead of passing the buck and closing their eyes to the consequences, the City Council would be better advised to find the money somewhere — whether from private sources like Maddie’s Fund or the state or federal government (but don’t hold your breath waiting for the feds to help, given how much Trump would love to stick it to Oakland).
It’s the only long-term solution, and the longer we wait, the more it’s going to cost. Pay for it now or later. Please don’t call the animal shelter and tell them what terrible people they are. They’re not terrible; they’re sick at heart about this. It’s a problem out of their control. They probably won’t answer the phone anyway because there’s almost no one left. They just lost eight more permanent full-time jobs, and that was before the council’s vote.
Look, I know the city is in an economic crisis. There are so many serious problems to deal with, including a huge budget deficit, high crime rates, climate change (and the increasing fire danger that comes with it), slow job recovery and a growing sense of insecurity among residents and businesses. Let’s not forget our furry friends, though.
Gandhi said you can judge a society by how it deals with its most vulnerable members, and he made a point to add that he was including animals. This is a moral crisis. Let’s treat it as one.
Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.