Shelter Me

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- Boomer?

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(dramatic music) - When there are feral cats that are not spayed and neutered, you have a Hitchcock film.

It gets out of control - Trap, neuter, return is the most humane way to deal with the spiraling overpopulation of feral cats.

- We have plenty more coming.

- We did it.

- Love you.

(staff clapping) (uplifting orchestra music) (audience shouting indistinctly) (orchestra music fades) (gentle acoustic guitar music) - [Narrator] Many of us are familiar with the sight of a cat or kitten curled up or playing in a loving home.

(gentle acoustic guitar music continues) Yet for every cat living in comfort and security, countless more across the country struggle with a life of survival.

They exist in the places we normally don't see.

Back alleys, vacant lots, under bridges, anywhere existence is barely possible, but never safe or easy.

Currently, Los Angeles alone has a homeless cat population estimated at over 3 million cats.

And without veterinary care or fertility control, they quickly reproduce, creating a crisis of overpopulation.

Solutions are argued, but agreement is scarce.

It remains the work of volunteer groups and nonprofits, to find ways of addressing the problem.

- [Trapper] Woo-hoo.

(gentle piano music) - [Narrator] From an industrial building near the Burbank Airport, one such group called Fix Nation regularly offers free spay/neuter services for feral and stray cats.

- I am Karn Myers, Executive Director and co-founder of Fix Nation.

- [Narrator] Volunteers from across the city arrive with stray cats that have been captured and will get TNR, short for trap, neuter, return.

- So today we're going to be fixing over 200 cats and we're having four veterinarians on.

So it's gonna be our biggest day ever.

And what we do is we spay and neuter all those kitties for the day.

- [Narrator] A typical morning at Fix Nation begins with check-in and prep for surgery.

- [Karn] So what's gonna be happening is trappers are going to be coming and bringing, they could be bringing one cat, they could be bringing 20 cats.

Every depends upon every situation.

(gentle piano music continues) They're gonna pull up, we're gonna check them in and off they go into the clinic.

- [Kimberlie] I've learned a lot about how feral cats are treated in other cities around the world.

Taking them to shelters doesn't work.

These cats can't be adopted so they end up being euthanized.

This is the most humane way to deal with the spiraling overpopulation of feral cats in Los Angeles, which has the largest population they've estimated anywhere in the nation.

- [Cat Trapper 2] I have Sasha here and she's one of the cats in our community around our house.

We've been feeding her for a while, gaining her trust and little by little, and we're gonna meet her today and, you know, hopefully she lives a better life, just not having to get pregnant and go into heat.

We just wanna do the right thing for her at this time.

- My name is Jenny and I'm with the Little Lion Foundation and we are here dropping off 15 community cats to get TNRed.

- I am Jacquie Navratil, Founder of a grassroots group called Luxe Paws.

We're volunteers in a little corner of LA and we've been doing TNR for 10 years.

- [Kimberlie] TNR stands for trap neuter return.

Some people think it means trap, neuter, release.

but it's actually return.

And that was the really important thing that you just can't take them back out anywhere and release them on the street.

Their home, what they knew, their familiar territory was where they lived.

So trapped them, neutered them, brought them back and returned them to their home territory.

- So they were all trapped yesterday, 11 of 'em were trapped at one location.

It's a restaurant and they contacted us for help with their colony and the other four were trapped at two separate other locations that we've been working on.

- In communities where they're not addressed and they're allowed to breed, you know, when your feral cats, they're not spayed and neutered, they multiply like every 63 days.

So when those numbers are not kept down, you have a Hitchcock film, right?

It just, it gets out of control.

It gets so overwhelming.

- [Karn] The various terms you have heard for community cats are free roaming, feral, homeless, someone who has abandoned a cat, put it out in the street and even though they're not living in a home, they are part of the community and we need to care about them.

(moody music) This is your community.

You need to care about these community cats.

You know, a lot of people don't realize that how many kitties one cat can have.

A female can, I mean, being in Southern California gestation period is 63 days.

We have perfect weather.

They can get pregnant while they're nursing.

A male cat can roam five to 10 miles in one day, getting all kinds of females pregnant.

So for every cat that we fix, we have prevented these other kitties from being born who quite frankly will never have any homes and probably end up in the shelter.

Yes, woo-hoo!

(moody music continues) - [Cat Trapper 3] See you go in there.

- The problem is chronic.

We just don't have enough spay and neuter.

Why?

I don't know.

We need a lot more.

and that's why this is so, so critical, getting these kitties fixed, preventing all these litters, saving space at shelters and rescues for cats that need to be rehomed if someone can't keep them.

So they're not putting them on the street and it's just, it's the greatest way to impact the most lives.

- We had 28 total, which is my personal record for cats in this van.

Usually we go about 24, but we had extra today, because of all the stuff that was happening.

- Today she's got 23 cats so we're all helping and helping her get 'em organized, you know, so we're just really trying to make a dent.

(gentle piano music) - I've been doing this spay and neuter for about eight years now and I think the most important thing to point out, is these are all volunteers right here.

We're all volunteers.

Like almost none of us are getting paid.

We spend our own money, our own time, night after night, and none of it's easy, but it has to be done.

- No, we're just really moving through and we got a lot of kitties 'cause it's not, they're not just like one or two.

As you can see they had 16.

I know there are a couple more here that have 10 at least.

So you'll be seeing them.

(gentle piano music continues) - So we're just prepping for surgery.

Well we're scheduled 200 cats and we're hoping to get 200 cats, but we'll see what's being trapped.

We might end up with 150, 160, we're hoping.

- Is this guy ready for me?

I'm Daniella Castillo and I am a veterinarian in Los Angeles, California.

At Fix Nation we couldn't do the job that we do without trappers.

So there's these amazing people who go and trap these cats at night or the day before.

They drive them all the way here to Fix Nation at 7: 00 AM drop them off, our staff checks them in, gets all their information paperwork signed.

After that, they are depending if they are community cats, they go on one side and then the companion cats go on the other side.

- Every cat is assigned a number.

One number is put on the cover, one number is put on the trap or the carrier and then the cat goes into the clinic.

We have paperwork that will match up with the number, which will also follow the cat through the clinic and all the processes that it will have for the day.

- [Wendy] In the community of Los Angeles, it's very unique.

Yes, we do have spay and neuter vans, but this is the only brick and mortar, very large facility, multiple vet facility, that can make this difference every single day.

Reducing those numbers of feral cats on the streets of Los Angeles.

(gentle guitar music) - We are open Wednesday through Saturday and we fix usually a hundred cats a day.

And last year we fixed 17,070 cats.

To date we have now fixed over a quarter of a million cats and when Mark and I first started, we started with six cats.

So here we are.

- Karn Myers is amazing.

(laughs) I've known Karn like I said, since 2009.

And then I met Mark, Karn's late husband, and I was introduced to what they were doing here and Karn told me how she got into the business of spay and neutering cats.

- I used to work for a special effects house and we took over these two huge industrial buildings and I see these ladies outside feeding these cats.

So finally I stopped and I asked 'em what they were doing.

They said, we're feeding these cats.

And I said, "Who's are they?"

And they said, "No one's."

And that's when it was like, "What do you mean no one's?"

I went home to Mark and I said, "Honey, there's homeless cats.

What are we gonna do?"

- And she had an epiphany and she and Mark got together and they formed everything that you see here.

(gentle guitar music continues) - So right now I'm drawing up the drugs for the cats.

One of them is gonna be to sedate the cat and then the other one is gonna be used to reverse the cat after they have received their surgery and received all their services like vaccinations and fluid.

- Inductions put the kitty under and we actually induce a community of cats through the trap.

We do not open the trap and do it that way.

We inject through the trap.

- That's it.

Every cat varies when it comes to taking effect of the drug.

Some in a minute, some it's a matter of few seconds or so and I just wait and I just go along with the processes, keep on inducing to see where the doctors are at.

So how far behind I am.

I kind of set the flow.

- My staff is amazing.

(laughs) You know, when I hire people I always have to tell them they need to be very mission-driven to work here.

You gotta really, really care about the cats and they step up.

(dramatic music) - It is your straightforward assembly line operation, right?

You've got your different stations that are doing each phase of the process.

And because they're focused on one thing, they're very fast, they're very safe and they're very sophisticated.

The communication is really, really well.

The team works very well together.

- This is really fast.

I think from the time that they're inducted to the time that they're done with surgeries, maybe at the most 30 minutes of the wait and the surgery time, they get shave all the hair in the area where we're gonna open, depending if they are males or females.

The males, they stay outside and it's a 30-second surgery that we do, which is, you know, you saw we just tied the cords with their own tissue.

So I've been doing spays in the other room and now I'm just gonna do a neuter, that takes like maybe 30 seconds to finish and that's for the next few hours.

All I'm gonna be doing, just going from table to table, doing the spays and neuters.

I love doing them.

(laughs) - The veterinarians are fantastic.

Obviously, if we didn't have veterinarians, we wouldn't be doing any of this.

And they are specialists, they are like heart surgeons.

This is their expertise and they're rare.

- I used to work in general practice, but I wasn't getting a good feeling at the end of the day.

Like when I work at the high volume spay/neuter.

I was a registered veterinary technician before I became a vet and I used to volunteer at Fix Nation.

So I knew I would love to do this as a vet as well.

So I came back.

- I'm Naomi Turner, I'm a veterinarian and I work in what we call high quality, high volume spay/neuter.

So that means I work for clinics where we sterilize large numbers of dogs, cats, rabbits, in a short period of time.

I'll pull it out.

And this over here that I'm holding on right here, that's her ovary.

Currently I do about 8,000 surgeries a year and I've done close to 60,000 surgeries, so far since I became a veterinarian.

And I hope to do a hundred thousand over my career.

The parts that are gonna go are the uterine horn and the ovaries so that she won't go in heat and won't be able to get pregnant.

Everything looks good, everything's really well tied off.

She's ready to get closed up.

It seems that people who are a little bit more of a fast-paced personality type tend to be attracted to this type of work.

Not just the surgeons but also the nurses, the administrative staff, people who enjoy kind of just a fast paced work environment.

- Okay, this is the 165th kitty and we have plenty more coming.

- Nice.

Awesome, awesome.

- Awesome.

- Today we had a total of four surgeons and a team of, gosh probably what, 15 to 20 support staff.

My team was in our stationary clinic, Fix Nation here inside, three veterinarians and a huge team of support staff.

And then outside we had our colleagues on one of our mobile surgery units with another veterinarian and another team of support staff.

- So we are Spay4LA, we're helping out just doing, you know, community cats today, we have 51 on board today.

So my job is to sedate.

I, you know, I sedate them, get 'em ready for surgery and then I give 'em their pain injection.

I give 'em an antibiotic injection.

I make sure that they don't have a microchip, 'cause you know there are cats out there who are microchipped that you know, get trapped.

- Their hair gets shaved, their ear gets tipped, indicating that they're gonna be fixed.

- As you can tell, they do get ear tipped and that's a sign that everybody knows this cat is fixed, you know, it's vaccinated, it's fixed, don't try to trap it again.

You know?

- [Naomi] And then they come into the surgeons, we perform our surgery, they get all of the medications that they're gonna need injectably, because most of the pets that come through are a community cats.

So they may not be completely handleable.

So antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, pain medication, vaccines, any microchips, anything that needs to be given, it's gonna be given injectably.

- So 51 total.

They're pretty quick 'cause they're old cats, you know, so, it'll be a busy day, but good day.

- [Daniella] We are alternating doing females here and males, so we're always doing a surgery.

We are basically removing our gloves and moving into the next surgery.

Yeah, I love doing surgery.

This is my favorite thing.

I can be doing this all day and night.

(uplifting music) - I love doing this.

- Okay I'm gonna go on break.

- Hi there.

(uplifting music continues) - [Daniella] I think it was challenging for the rest of the staff, because they're not used to that many cats.

For us it's, you know, like, we're loving these surgery after surgery, we're happy.

I think the three of us were super happy.

So I, every time that we spay and neuter, one cat we're helping, like many, many cats.

Usually don't wanna spay or neuter or anybody that doesn't look okay or that looks that needs more care because we don't want people to just release these animals just like that.

I personally think these cats are, this is the only time they're gonna be seen by a vet.

So if we can do anything to help them go back to be in the, you know, in the wild, like as healthy as possible and not affect them.

- We found a cat yesterday that was gone for a year and we were able to actually give it back to their original owners and they were so happy to get their cat back.

So I am big, big, big on microchipping and I'm also big, big on trapping.

So I mean the solution is, you know, trapping and fixing cats.

- [Daniella] The same after the cat is done, they got to recovery, they get all the goodies, fluids, et cetera.

And here we use an anesthesia that has a reversal or an antidote.

So as soon as we're done with surgery, we give them this injection and they come back pretty fast within five minutes.

- So when this cat gets to the station, we hit 'em with the adrenaline shot, which is the reversal.

And we also check their capillary refill time and check their color to see if it's okay and it's not too yucky or anything.

And we see, we check their eyes to see if their pupils retract, which they are.

So this cat's, okay.

We also monitor for breathing for all the cats.

This one's same thing.

Check their color looks good.

This one, you can tell they're waking up by the jaw tone.

This one's gonna wake up.

All I gotta do is just a little shake.

(gentle music) - We're almost done.

Okay, we had a big number today.

That's awesome.

- I know we've never done this many here before.

- Yay.

We did it.

Okay.

- All right.

We just wrapped up here.

One of our other colleagues, our fourth colleague feels good.

Oh my goodness.

- Yeah, after the cats are awake, they are put back in their cages.

- Since this one's fully awake, we can put 'em face first.

- And then the trappers just pick them up.

We ask 'em to keep them overnight, they release them back the next day and we come back again the next day.

(gentle music) - [Katie] My name is Katie Matz, and I run a little independent rescue called Anthropology Animal Rescue.

These are the cats that we trapped last night and tomorrow they will all be, well the feral ones will be returned back to where they came from and they've got feeders who will look after them and the ones that can be socialized will find homes and hopefully go on to live happy, healthy indoor lives.

- The record here, the last I checked was 186.

(gentle music continues) - He's four months old, so it would've been really nice to have him into a home.

But there's no homes available for these kittens and you just kind of have to hang on that you're making their life better, but you wish it could be more.

You wish it could be perfect.

- Los Angeles wants to, claims to be so progressive, they should start with the animals and do the spay and neuter for free, for all the dogs and all the cats to stop this situation.

- Okay, she's picking up also.

- If we didn't have Fix Nation to provide medical care for ferals, I don't know what they would do.

They would be really suffering because the shelters won't take them a lot of the times.

But yeah, so we did good.

Today we only had, I had two with the upper respiratory infection.

I buy medication 25 bucks and then I hold them in a crate for seven days and treat 'em and then I bring 'em back to get neutered and then release 'em the following day.

- It was a wonderful day, the highest number we've ever done.

Thank you all, I know you gave your heart and soul every single one of you.

I can't tell you how much I really appreciate it.

Alrighty, so today we did 170 cats in the clinic outside Spay4LA did 52 in the van.

So we ended up doing 222 cats total.

(staff cheers) And quite frankly, I don't know anyone who has done that.

So thank you guys for hanging in here.

You're stepping up and you know, we all get surprises and we stepped up and we did it.

So thanks again.

I really appreciate, love you.

- [Staff Member] It's our pleasure.

- Love you from the bottom of my heart.

I really, really do.

- [Staff Member] We love you too.

(staff cheers) (upbeat music) - And 222 is not only significant in the difference in numbers, that's, you know, almost 40, but think about that exponentially, right?

And those cats are not out breeding every 63 days, creating six to eight more cats every 60 days, though they're not doing that anymore.

We're not contributing to the problem.

We're actually reducing the problem.

I feel like I did something really great, or I was a part of something really great.

- [Daniella] I love cats.

I love how independent they are and they choose to come to you.

I've always had a special connection with cats.

I have cats all my life.

I really, really wish that we will have more programs to teach other veterinarians.

Like I love having visitors, like veterinarians coming here to Fix Nation and learn it and help Karn, and help other places, hopefully.

- We really love these cats and we think that they deserve a good life.

And this is the first step.

- Fix Nation means everything.

It's such a huge, pivotal part of our movement here to do TNR in Los Angeles.

Being without it, we'd be lost.

- Okay.

- Hi kids.

- So all for you Jacquie.

- We love you so much.

Such a happy day.

Okay, kids, let's go.

This is what animal welfare is about.

People that are, they have a vision, they wanna solve a problem and they're digging in and doing it.

This is not ideal for me, but again, there is no other alternative.

We cannot round up cats and kill them.

That's not gonna solve the problem.

We've seen that.

And so it's the absolute best that we can do.

I mean, look at that.

This is no different than somebody's kitty except it didn't fix its mom soon enough.

So it's destiny is to be in Little Tokyo, downtown LA.

There's so many, I gotta keep moving.

I gotta keep fixing and fixing and get 'em when they are babies, if I can.

The more we can do this, the fewer of them are gonna be out there.

And, you know, the fewer kittens I gotta put back on the street.

We are saving thousands of lives.

It's incredible.

So over 200 cats, all these volunteers, doctors, it's really inspiring.

And this is what we need to see more of in every city across the country.

(bright piano music) - [Karn] There's a lot of kitties that are out there.

I mean, there's a guesstimate of one to three million and we fix as many as we possibly can, but quite frankly, it can be paralyzing just to think about how many there are out there and just say, "Oh my God, I can't do anything."

But it does make a difference to that one cat.

My team will prevent other kitties being born and suffering whatever way that may be.

- So, that's it for today.

And then I'll trap cats on Sunday night and take 'em to quality vet on Monday and get them fixed.

It goes on and on and on.

But you know, I just can't look away.

- You can't, once you know about them, you can't walk away.

And that's where I'm at and will always be.

(bright piano music fades) - Petco Love Lost.

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