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In 2012, the Halifax cat known worldwide as Tuxedo Stan ran for mayor, drawing awareness to the city’s feral cat problem. He quickly became a famous internet cat, and shortly after, city councillors signed the Tuxedo Stan pledge and promised to address Halifax’s feral cat crisis.
Three years later, Stan is dead, and local cat rescue charities say those promises have yet to be fulfilled.
“A lot of people believe that the city is dealing with these issues because it’s been in the news so much in the last years. They’re quite surprised when I tell them that nothing is happening,” says Linda Felix, who volunteers with the Spay Day HRM Society.
Felix, who was also involved with the Tuxedo Stan campaign, says it’s a blatant animal cruelty issue.
“We rescued a cat in January that was almost frozen to the ground. We had to pry him out and he was literally a bag of bones, and hours from death.”
The crisis is particularly severe in low-income areas, where people often can’t afford to get their cats fixed.
“In public housing there’s a rodent problem, so people get cats to control it,” says Felix. “These people are largely rescuing cats. They see them outside freezing to death and they let them in. The shelters are full, so they keep them…they don’t go out of their way to acquire animals that they can’t afford.”
In the months following the Tuxedo Stan campaign, the SPCA received a $40,000 grant from the city to help establish a low cost spay-and-neuter clinic.
“There still exists a cat crisis in our province. But since our spay and neuter clinic opened in 2013, we have performed over 5,000 surgeries,” says Sandra Flemming, director of animal care for the Nova Scotia SPCA. “It’s at the heart of fixing the problem of cat overpopulation.”
Flemming says the SPCA has been aggressively tackling the issue. Last year, for the first time, they saw a reduction in the amount of stray and abandoned kittens coming into their shelter during the peak breeding season. But she says that the SPCA , with their limited resources, can’t solve the problem on their own.
“We do receive generous grants through the HRM Grant Committee for infrastructure renewal and expenditures. But our shelter does not receive any funding whatsoever for our day-to-day operations. It takes about $65,000 to $75,000-a-month to run.”
In January, councillor Stephen Adams tabled a motion for the creation of a Domestic Animal Advisory Committee, which would include local veterinarians, members from cat rescue groups, the Nova Scotia SPCA and a provincial representative from the Department of Natural Resources.
According to a spokesperson for the city, staff are currently drafting a report to assess the project. It will come back before Regional Council for further discussion later this year.
While Felix and Flemming both welcome the project, they say they have not yet been contacted to participate.
“They’re still studying the idea of having people sit around a table to talk about cats,” says Felix. “If they can’t sit down and talk about cats, how can they solve all the major problems in the city, such as poverty and homelessness? Cats are just part of that equation.”
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This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2015.
it’s high time the city offered funding to the rescue groups that are doing all the work. I have rescued over 1000 cats and had them all spayed and neutered, and there are growing colonies all over the city that need to be dealt with.
I HAVE RESCUED MY SHARE WITH MY OWN MONEY BUT THE HELP THATS NEEDED IS MORE THAN A FEW CAN HANDLE . PLEASE STOP TALKING AND DO SOMETHING. THE CATS DESERVE BETTER FROM US . THANK YOU
Perhaps less funding to Hope for wildlife /homeward bound & more to the rescue groups who have people out in all weather, at all hours, picking up lost/stray/abandoned cats! How about a building somewhere in this damn city to house the cats in temporarily instead of the rescue groups also having to beg for foster homes! How about actually charging & naming that freaks who abuse & abandon the animals! So much needs to be done!! City council & government needs to get off their butts and do something, less talk more action!!! Disgusted in the whole lot of them!
A small start would be to abolish the financial conflict of interest that exists, wherein citizens who voluntarily TNR (Trap/Neuter/Release) feral cats are taxed on the funds they pay out of their own pockets for the spay/neuter. The government coffers should not be padded with taxes of Nova Scotians who donate their time & money to address an issue for which local government has repeatedly failed to take responsibility.