Flatbush Cats will run a city-funded low-cost spay and neuter pilot program after the City Council voted Thursday to allocate $500,000 toward the initiative.
The funding will support about 3,500 low-cost surgeries over the next year in an effort to lower the financial burden on pet owners and independent rescuers and, in turn, reduce the number of cats in shelters and on the streets.
“It is a critical first step,” said Will Zweigart, founder and executive director of Flatbush Cats and its veterinary clinic, Flatbush Vet. “This is the first time the City Council, in the city budget, has included funding for spay/neuter for its pets. We’ve had shelters in New York City for 140 plus years, this is the first year we’re getting proactive about prevention.”
There are at least 500,000 stray cats in New York City, though most rescuers believe that estimate is too low. In recent years, feral populations have risen, and the city’s independent rescuers and animal shelters are struggling to keep up. Last summer, Animal Care Centers of New York was forced to temporarily suspend intakes for the first time in its history as its shelters were stretched beyond capacity.
Local animal experts believe that the ever-rising cost of veterinary care is driving the shelter crisis as both pet owners and rescuers struggle to afford care, including spay and neuter surgeries.
“We’re never going to adopt our way out of the overcrowded animal shelters,” said Council Member Justin Brannan, who chairs the Finance Committee and spearheaded the initiative. “The way to do it is to go upstream and figure out why this is happening, and it’s because of lack of access to affordable veterinary care.”
Flatbush Cats is one of few organizations in the city who have the ability to actually perform spay and neuter surgeries themselves, he said, and most rescuers and Trap-Neuter-Return groups rely on their services.
Zweigart said Flatbush Cats already performs between 5,000 and 7,000 spay/neuter surgeries every year.
“The goal here is to treat this funding as a catalyst to expand surgical capacity and that is, again, a citywide need,” he said.
The cash will largely allow the clinic to hire more veterinary staff and surgeons, he said, so they can perform the extra 3,500 surgeries over the next year.
Exactly how much the affordable surgeries will cost is still being worked out, Zweigart said. Most private vet clinics charge at least $1,000 for spay/neuter, and Flatbush Vet typically charges $225 for a cat and between $300-$400 for dogs.
Flatbush Cats has interviewed dozens of pet owners about what they would consider affordable for a one-time procedure like a spay/neuter.
“The majority have all landed somewhere between $100-$200, where they believe that is affordable and reasonable and attainable,” Zweigart said. “It’s really important, when we talk about scaling, that people’s needs vary, so our pricing is on a sliding scale. These grants allow us to be even more flexible with that pricing and offer services at either low or no cost.”
During the year, Flatbush Cats will track the program’s progress and work with the city to figure out how the program can be expanded in the future.
New York City needs an estimated 190,000 affordable spay/neuter surgeries each year, Zweigart said. As the city gets closer to that number, the impacts will start to become more apparent.
“This funding is a critical first step, and we should celebrate it,” he said. “We should also acknowledge that this funding alone could meet less than 2% of New York City’s need for affordable spay/neuter surgeries.”
Brannan — who said he and his wife care for and feed a colony of feral cats near their home — said scaling the program up could look like opening Flatbush Cats-esque clinics in each borough, or making partnerships with local veterinarians.
“There’s myriad ways we could do it,” he said. “The hard part, obviously, is identifying the funding stream and earmarking the money, then figuring out who has the capacity to do it.”
Brannan is term-limited at the end of this year, and Flatbush Cats and other animal lovers will have to find another champion within the Council, Zweigart said. But Brannan said that while Council-funded vet services haven’t been approved before, finding broad support wasn’t difficult.
“I like to say we’re in the Yankees-Red Sox era of politics, where everything is insanely toxic and divisive,” Brannan said. “You’d like to think animal issues, it’s one area that transcends all that toxic bulls–t.”
Even council members who haven’t typically been animal advocates have constituents who struggle to fund rescue or TNR programs, Brannan said, and there was enough awareness around the issue to drum up broad support.
While many rescues, including Flatbush Cats, are funded at least partially by donations and other grants, the city government will need to invest significantly in order to fully address the shelter crisis, Zweigart said.
“The goal and the hope is that this funding collectively leads us toward a situation, years from now, where the city is funding and possibly, in some cases, running these clinics,” he said. “Because they are standard, important, critical services that New Yorkers need.”
