TROY, NEW YORK — Cats are tndeed he most popular pet, according to the United States Humane Society.
If you drive near Center Street or Third Street in Troy, you might just see one or two or five roaming around.
“Where I live now, there’s a feral cat that had babies every year. I had to watch them get killed by cars,” said Rose Mary Waytkus, Operation Snip Volunteer.
Several years ago, Troy had literally hundreds of feral cats but once the organization, ‘Operation Snip’ sprung into action, the number has gone down significantly.
“If you’ve got too many cats roaming around, you’ve got fecal matter, you’ve got fighting, you’ve got spraying, and you just have litter all over the place,” said Lynn Kopka, President of Operation Snip.
While cats are known to be very resourceful and extremely independent, their life span gets shortened if they’re feral, as in they only live up to two years versus up to 20 years.
Cat lover, Lynn Kopka didn’t want to see this happen anymore, so she became a trapper.
When it comes to trapping, the cat will willingly go inside the trap to get the food, they’ll step on this trip plate and the gate will close down and the cat is officially inside. Once a cat is trapped, he or she is spayed or neutered, receive the proper shots, get fed and even sometimes are put up for adoption.
“Whenever we get a cats that are friendly and that are clearly not wild and do not belong outside, yes, we do make every effort to place them,” said Kopka.
Many of these cats are caught in horrible conditions medically, but once they leave Operation Snip, they’re back to being healthy.
And the more cats are trapped, the less feral cats there are, and the longer cats can live.
“We need to stop these cats from reproducing,” Kopka continued.
There’s been less “catting around” since operation snip went into action. If you ever see a clipped ear cat, they’ve been well cared for by the organization.
Operation Snip needs all the help they can get when it comes to taking feral cats off the streets and are always looking for volunteers.
“Operation Snip” has also trapped cats in the area of Green Island, Watervliet and Cohoes.
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