I’m feeling very introspective right now. 

Late last night, Nina sent me a screenshot from Facebook about someone giving away free kittens in the Winco parking lot near my house and asked if I wanted to go on an “adventure” — meaning, “Do you want to go get these babies right now?” I replied, dressed back up, and headed out the door. 

On my three-block drive, I prepared myself for an interaction with people I was already forming bad words in my head for. (I tend to prefer cats over people; can you tell?) When I pulled up, I found a white truck blasting music, signs along the road advertising the FREE KITTENS, and two little grey-and-white kittens in a wire kennel that was sitting on a grassy area between the parking lot and the road. In the cool night, the kittens were huddled together for warmth. I walked up, fuming, and began texting Nina. They were too old for our neonate rescue, but she told me to take them if I thought we could get them safe and adopted. 

While I was texting, one of the women from the truck began to tell me about them: their genders, litter-box training status, personalities, etc. I introduced myself as a member of Tri City Kitty Rescue. The woman brightened and told me about her situation. She does this every year for weeks until the litters end. You see, she has about twenty feral and stray cats in her yard, and every year the numbers climb as they reproduce like — well, cats. 

I asked if she’d heard of the Tri Cities TNR (trap, neuter, return) program. She hadn’t. But she did tell me that when the trap she had borrowed from a local animal shelter didn’t catch a cat the first day, a man came and took it back, rudely saying that he was removing them from their list of people to help — and she is desperate for help. I told her to contact TNR and then Tri City Kitty Rescue. While we are overfull right now, our available space can change daily — as is the case with all rescues. 

While we continued to talk, we discussed the situation in the Tri-Cities, including the colony of over a hundred feral cats in Kennewick, the need for low-cost and free sterilization of cats, and the large disparity in the resources dedicated to dogs relative to cats in our community. It reminded me of a brief exchange I had with Jed Hoyt from KEPR Action News on Saturday about our cat overpopulation crisis. He had seemed appalled to learn of the many feral populations of cats here, and the difficulties of curtailing the crisis. 

Listening to the woman, I began to realize that she was just another desperate citizen, shouldered with the care of animals she didn’t ask for, who had stepped up in her own way. She cares for the babies of these feral cats, bringing them inside, socializing them, litter-box training them, and preparing them for a new home. She hopes that they are going to good homes and not being used for dog bait, but she can’t be sure. She even gave me a large donation for the rescue (it would be enough to have a cat spayed, if we were in Seattle).  

I left, feeling sad, angry, and helpless. Not at her — no, she’s a victim of all of this. I had all those feelings for the people who can do something, but choose to turn a blind eye. I had nothing but compassion for the woman in the white truck. 

The problem is widespread. I had an exchange in The Fix Machine lobby on Monday with a woman bringing in her cat to be spayed. Normally an indoor cat, she didn’t think it was necessary to fix her. Someone let the cat out one time and she came back pregnant. She told me that she could only give away two kittens before taking the rest to the shelter. 

That’s a sign of overpopulation. We — as shelters, rescues, and the general population — are overrun, and a feasible system to prevent it is nonexistent. People are using their own resources to trap and alter cats in their neighborhoods/yards, sometimes to the extent that they stretch themselves beyond their means. 

Why don’t the Tri-Cities Animal Shelter and Benton-Franklin Humane Society provide public alterations at a low cost — or free — as others across the state do? Why can’t we get a vet back at Pet OverPopulation Prevention (POPP)? Why do vets continue to refuse to alter before six months when they know that kittens as young as four months can (and do) get pregnant? There are a lot of questions our community needs to answer to get this under control. Animals are suffering, and that suffering is expanding to the humans around them. 

This isn’t designed to shame, blame, or criticize but to ask necessary questions to move forward. Perhaps the first step is to get all the private and 501(c)(3) rescues — POPP, Paws and Claws, Tumbleweed, TCKR, etc. — together to recruit vets into doing a weekend spay/neuter clinic at cost. It would be a monumental undertaking, but one that is desperately needed. 

Lou Meigs is a volunteer, activist, music enthusiast, and human.

Visit Tri City Kitty Rescue on Facebook.