Rich Mellott — Staff reporter
LAKEPORT — If cats have nine lives, Lake County Animal Care and Control (LCACC) has spent more than a year providing them with an opportunity to live them.
That”s one of several reasons why LCACC Director Bill Davidson likes to think his agency turned a corner over the past 12 months.
“We”ve been able to return a huge number of cats to the community,” Davidson said. “Also, our adoption rates have increased for both cats and dogs.”
Davidson and his LCACC staff are pleased with the set of numbers in the agency”s annual report released last month, including the euthanasia rates for cats falling from 85 percent to 50 percent, and the “live return rate” (animals returned to the community) rising from 31 percent to 51 percent.
It was 2? years ago when Davidson saw some other stats that weren”t nearly as attractive.
After hiring an expert to determine if the agency would be better off running its own clinic, Davidson was given some encouraging news: yes, an LCACC clinic would be cost-effective and would also be able to better serve the community.
But along with the good news came a particularly disturbing statistic: Lake County had the highest feline euthanasia rate in the state.
“It jolted me,” Davidson said. “That was the real impetus to make some changes.”
A year later, the LCACC opened its own clinic, hired its own veterinarian and began doing its own neutering and spaying of dogs and cats.
Davidson said the $56,000 needed to get the clinic off the ground came from a donation account — but it was money that began paying dividends as soon as the clinic opened.
“We had been out-sourcing all our medical services to local veterinarians, and we realized we could do it cheaper ourselves,” Davidson said.
Which enabled the agency, with the help of grants from the ASPCA and PetSmart Charities, to lower its adoption costs for cats and dogs and, along with its low-cost, twice-a-year-vaccination clinics, offer walk-in rabies shots for $6 apiece.
In the meantime, its community cat program got rolling, offering free-of-charge vaccinations and neutering services to any stray cat that was brought in by a resident — as long as the resident was willing to return the cat to its neighborhood.
Discounts for low-income pet owners are also offered.
Among other favorable indicators in the 2012-13 report are adoption rates that are up by 35 percent, and dog and cat “intake” numbers that are down considerably, especially for cats (27 percent lower), which Davidson says is more evidence that the community cat program — along with the dog and cat adoption programs — is making an impact.
Davidson said the numbers aren”t suggesting the LCACC isn”t facing major challenges in coming months, but they do say that a lot more cats and dogs are benefitting.
And a corner — maybe one with a fire hydrant on it — may have been turned.
Rich Mellott is a staff reporter for Lake County Publishing. He can be reached at 263-5636, ext. 14 or rmellott@record-bee.com.
