The Society for Animals in Distress held a five-day Feral Festival from June 28 in an effort to sterilise feral cats.
Marizda Kruger, the society’s outreach manager, said the festival came about because every year there were thousands of kittens born at factories and shopping centres and have no home.
“There are many people who care for these animals and feed them, but if you do not curb their breeding, it becomes a nightmare because people do not have enough food to feed them. Not curbing their breeding could result in your three cats becoming 20 and then 100,” Kruger said.
“So we decided to do this during winter and make this available to all feral feeders so that we can curb the massive influx of kittens that come every summer.”
Explaining how the process worked, Kruger said they did an ovarian hysterectomy on the cats. “The cats get put under anaesthetics and then we remove their breeding organs, and then all cats are marked so that they can be identified easily. If you ever walk around and see a cat with the top of its ear cut, that means that cat can no longer breed.”
Kruger added that they were hoping to sterilise 200 cats by the end of the initiative.
She said because the society was a non-profit organisation, the Feral Festival was only possible because of partnerships with Different Life Insurance and their animal-loving policy-holders who donate to the project on their crowd-funding platform.
Details: To find out more about the Society for Animals in Distress, visit www.animalsindistress.org.za or email business engagement manager Karin Demir on engage@saidbusiness.org.za to assist the make a difference.
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