A Case for Low-Cost Spay/Neuter: Lowell Cats

Contributed by: Crystal Arnott, Executive Director of the Lowell Humane Society

In 2008, Lowell, Massachusetts was reaching crisis levels in terms of homeless cats. The population was out of control, there were cats and kittens being surrendered at alarming rates on a daily basis, and countless strays were being brought in. There were daily complaints about the countless feral and community cats reproducing outside, causing a nuisance with their spraying, howling, and fighting for resources. Lowell Humane Society was faced with overcrowding and difficult euthanasia decisions that weighed heavily on the shelter staff every day. 

Despite the efforts of rescue groups working to TNR and rehome the many outdoor cats plaguing the streets of Lowell and surrounding communities (like Dracut, Tyngsboro, Chelmsford, Billerica and Tewksbury) there was barely a dent being made in the feral cat population that seemed to be at least partly to blame for the overpopulation issues our shelter was seeing. A major reason it was difficult to deal with the sheer numbers of cats being born outdoors was limited access to affordable spay/neuter appointments. 

The Lowell Humane Society was a small organization and while it had been in operation already for nearly 140 years, it struggled to keep up with the needs of the community; in 2008 it nearly closed its doors. This period of time would be a game-changer for cats in Lowell. The local groups began forging new partnerships that would pave the way to managing the local cat overpopulation issue. In utilizing their network of animal welfare partners, Lowell Humane Society was soon hosting the ARL Spay Waggin and Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society’s Catmobile. This partnership made low-cost spay/neuter available to residents on a regular basis, right in the community. These partnerships grew and thanks to funding provided by PetSmart Charities, even free spay/neuter opportunities were made available. 

Lowell Humane Society’s partnership with MRFRS Catmobile was an important step to getting a handle on the population of cats in Lowell and the surrounding communities. Things began to really take off with the creation of Lowell TNR Coalition, a crew of volunteers who took to the community to trap the ever-expanding colonies of feral cats. These small, all-volunteer organizations took the city by storm, spaying and neutering hundreds of cats. LHS was excited to partner with them and offer any sort of support that they needed. Kitty Angels is an amazing local cat rescue group that has been around for 25+ years. Their focus has always been the feral cats in the community and their great work was amplified with more accessible services.

Thanks to these partnerships, we have been able to drastically reduce the number of feral cats and kittens in Lowell, even offering training on trapping and low cost spay neuter opportunities to members of the community who find themselves caring for community cats themselves. Our numbers indicate a wave that anecdotally appears to correlate with changes to the cost and availability of spay neuter services.

In 2020 we saw a huge drop, which we know we can attribute to COVID. Veterinarians stopped doing “‘unnecessary” procedures in order to preserve PPE to be used in human practice, and veterinary hospitals were only open for emergency situations. Only the most necessary surgeries were being done, which meant the cats were no longer being spayed and neutered at the rates they were previously. In addition, funding for spay-neuter also seemed to decline. The spay-neuter services that were so important in the previous decade, began to take a backseat to some more of the popular causes in animal welfare, and there just wasn’t as much funding available any more to offer low-cost services – or to offer free services.

I expect to see our numbers steadily increase in coming years due to the limited access to spay/neuter during that time; even still today these programs and clinics are just beginning to open up again. Post Covid, as our services ramp up again, we have started to receive more calls than ever before about stray and feral cat populations. We have also seen our intake rise? number of owned pets, pregnant cats, and or nursing mothers with kittens being surrendered. While we really thought that we had spay/neutered ourselves out of the issue, these numbers clearly show that consistency is important to keep the cat population under control. This proves more than ever that a holistic focus on access to affordable spay/neuter for cats from all backgrounds (owned, feral or community cats) is an important focus that needs our attention. It is the “on-ramp” for the more general notion of access to care.