As a resident, I am asking each of you to bring our current contract with the Napa County Animal Shelter to a Council meeting for public input and review before it is approved. The lack of transparency around decisions that have been made has been disappointing.

Napa shelter says we’re not sheltering healthy stray pet cats. They’re going to become community cats now – and live outside with the feral cats, just spay & neuter them at Napa Humane, and return them back where found.

Napa Humane says we’re fully booked, sorry, can’t spay/neuter this community cat today. Maybe we’ll have a cancellation tomorrow.

The lack of spay/neuter resources to follow the county’s new strategy is like the Abbott & Costello version of “Who’s got a spay/neuter surgery for a community cat”.

I want to volunteer and help our city and reduce our population of unhoused community cats. Yet, the county and by extension our city with its contract with the Napa shelter, is not giving us any resources for spay/neuter for community cats. Our local vet charges $900-1000 for a spay surgery.

Our one small spay/neuter clinic in Napa is already overwhelmed. Yet, as anyone who attends city meetings know, we have 3,844 new housing units in Napa County to be built in the 6th cycle Housing Element. American Canyon alone has 860 approved units from Oat Hill, Lemos Pointe, Watson Ranch, and Napa Cove. As our human population grows, so will our pet population, and the need for spay/neuter services.

Your community cat volunteers in American Canyon can help stabilize and eventually reduce the population of unhoused community cats. But we need access to spay/neuter resources to help our city accomplish that. Did you know that other counties have their own spay/neuter resources and don’t rely on a private non-profit?

I remember being astounded that Oat Hill would pay like $4 million in development fees to Parks & Recreation for new park development. I believe we also have development impact fees for a new city hall, library and police station. What about spay/neuter??

We seriously need to independently assess what we want for our city as far as increasing our community cat population living in our neighborhoods and open spaces. The lack of available spay/neuter surgery will cause a spike in new births, but at least they will get to hangout in the new park spaces.

Thank you for listening to my concerns, and I look forward to your response.

This situation with community cats needs to have a full discussion with all parties involved together. It needs to be a transparent and open discussion with public involvement, too.

Right now no one is taking responsibility and just pointing at someone else to fix it. The Napa County Animal Shelter says Napa Humane will do spay/neuter and Napa Humane says they have no allocation of spay/neuter appointments for community cats. Who gets left holding the bag is us, the residents, and the growing number of free roaming and unaltered cats.

As the numbers of unaltered cats reach a tipping point, and there’s not enough food resources for them all, we’ll see them starving and suffering in the streets. Let’s not wait until then to take action.

As a tax payers I'd like to know what real services we're getting from the shelter. We already struggle to get to Napa to use them, but now there's even more roadblocks and lack of clear roles and responsibilities.

Thank you
Chris James

Mayor and City Council,

Now more than ever we need help from the city/community to support spay and neuter initiatives. Perhaps you've seen the daily posts (facebook, nextdoor, etc) from community members requesting help with pregnant cats, found kittens, injured cats, stray cats, etc. in their neighborhoods. We have even seen our fire department help with rescue efforts. We have so many community kittens/cats that need to be spayed or neutered.  Just within the last two weeks, a small group of volunteers trapped/rescued over 20 cats/kittens and the calls for help continue to pour in.  We need more spay and neuter resources to control the growing population, we just don’t have enough. For example, Napa Humane will only take in community cats (aka ferals) for spay/neuter if a domestic cat owner cancels or doesn't show to the appointment. There are no allotted slots daily or weekly for community cats (aka ferals) sterilization. We have some great volunteers that are willing to donate their time to trap cats to get them sterilized but we don't have a place to take these cats. We need to understand how the Napa County Shelter contract renewal will help with this situation. I'm still unclear. We need more spay and neuter resources for our city. We need full support from the city to recognize that spay and neuter also known as Trap-Neuter-Return program is not only effective to control the population but it’s a humane process.  It works as it sounds: Cats are humanely captured, spayed or neutered, vaccinated and ear-tipped for identification before they are returned to their outdoor homes where they can live on without making more babies.  Our community cats need our help. I've said it before and I'll say it again, supporting spay/neuter initiatives would be a win-win for all. I am out of town and will not be able to join the meeting but I hope you will read my comment.  Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.  

 

Thank you,

Rose Maldonado

 

we are seeing more posts for help on the Nextdoor App and Facebook Groups within our community asking for help with kittens, pregnant cats and free kittens. At this moment in this crisis, we have no resources available to us for spay/neuter., Please we need your help, would you please make sure our Shelter Contract has a guaranteed allocation for spay/neuter at a "local" vet for TNR, Trap-Neuter-Return of our community cats? We need resources to be able to spay/neuter in our city of American Canyon. Thank you