No Kill Cat Shelter/Sanctuary Works to Open a Low Cost Spay/Neuter Clinic in North Houston

Adopt A Cat is pleased to announce that we are planning the development and operation of a pubic accessible, high volume, high quality, low cost spay/neuter clinic. Our primary service area will be North Houston and Montgomery County. We are in the process of raising the $217,000 needed to start this project.

Adopt A Cat has been approved by the National Spay Neuter Response Team "NSNRT" whose business model we will use because of its proven track record. The program requires our team go to the Humane Alliance clinic in North Carolina for training and then the Humane Alliance team comes to our clinic in Texas for the opening. NSNRT has successfully opened 51 clinics across the US - a remarkable achievement! The Shelter Director and Founder of Adopt A Cat (Dr. Beverly Harper, PhD) and the Director of Fundraising (Deana Sellens) flew to North Carolina to review the Humane Alliance Clinic. We found this group to be completely remarkable.

A high volume, high quality, low cost spay/neuter clinic on Houston's northside is critical to the NO KILL mission for Houston. We have estimated the number of animals in the primary and outreach service areas based on the 2007 US Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook republished at www.avma.org.

Cats In Homes-165,311
Feral/Stray Cats-198,372
Dogs In Homes-146,532
Feral/Stray Dogs - 102,573
Estimated Total Animals in Service Areas - 612,788

Houston euthanizes approximately 29.4 animals per year for every 1,000 residents. The national average is 14.8 per the 2007 US Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook. Many of the euthanasias occur when a pet begins to exhibit distastful behaviors due to the fact that it is not altered not to mention the number resulting from unwanted pregnancies. Education and the availablity of low cost spay/neuter resources are key factors in our push toward a NO KILL Houston and keeping pets in happy, forever homes.

We have performed a detailed demographic study to determine the best area of Houston for a clinic and we found that the Greenspoint Area would be the most ideal location. The closest clinic to the proposed area is 21 minutes north during non rush hour traffic. The wait list to get into this clinic is almost 4 months. The next closest resources for the general public are between 45 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes away. The actual milege does not reflect the drive times because the clinics are located on major freeways and drop off/pick up times are during Houston's rush hour traffic. The only resource providing transport services is SNAP and you must be on public assistance to use the SNAP van. We will be implementing transport services within Harris County to several target zip codes based on poverty level and we have identified several "hot spots" in Montgomery county which will need transport.

We have partner rescues working in many of the outreach areas. We intend to use them to help schedule pick up/drop off plans with their community. In addition, we intend to make our marketing materials and personnel on staff bilingual. We will advertise in HUD and apartment complexes our monthly transport schedules. We are also networking with some of the area publications to help us get the word out.

Due to the mentoring that we have received from NSNRT and SNAP we believe we can become operational and profitable in a relatively short time frame. We just need the start up funding to begin the project. We will be looking for corporate sponsors to sponsor the various rooms of the clinic. For more information about sponsoring or volunteering with Adopt A Cat, you can visit our website at www.adoptacattexas.org.