Dr. Neuter

[JesusA (imported)]

Just two days after the featured article in the entertainment section of the San Francisco Chronicle included the fact that Lemony Snicket’s parents joked about having him castrated to prolong his singing career; we hit National Feral Cat Day. The featured article on the front page of the local news section is about castrating cats. Nearly half a page (with two color photos), plus another quarter page with two black and white photos inside.

Just call him Dr. Neuter

To take care of a male feral cat, it's just 51 seconds, start to finish

Steve Rubenstein, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, October 16, 2003

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/16/BAG6F2CCA71.DTL

Someone - probably not a cat -- decided that today is National Feral Cat Day, and scores of them are going under the knife at Bay Area animal shelters.

It's a good thing for cats in general, perhaps less of a good thing for the particular cat involved.

At the San Francisco SPCA, a couple dozen feral cats became intimately acquainted this week with the surgical skills of veterinarian David Stein, an amazing gentleman with lightning hands who hums along to a stereo while he works and who, according to the SPCA, has personally neutered no fewer than 100,000 cats and dogs.

From first cut to final stitch, it takes him 51 seconds to castrate a cat.

"I know what I'm looking for,'' Stein said, as the first few anesthetized cats of the day were placed before him in a row on the operating table. "I'm still trying to find my car keys and cell phone, though.''

Every day -- not just National Feral Cat Day -- is a good day to neuter feral cats, said the doc. For the past decade, the San Francisco SPCA has sponsored a program to provide free cat traps to volunteers and free neuter surgeries to all the cats they can round up and bring in -- 14,000 of them, at last count. The neutered cats are returned to the wild, and their inability to breed has led to a dramatic reduction of the feral cat population in San Francisco.

On Wednesday, Judy Miller brought in six cats. She has been trapping stray San Francisco cats for the past 16 years and bringing them to the shelter. She is one of several dozen dedicated cat lovers who spend much of their free time scouring parks, streets, empty buildings, cemeteries and backyards for colonies of strays. Cemeteries, especially Colma ones, are notorious for feral cats. There may be more dead people than live people in Colma, and there may be more feral cats than domestic ones there, too.

"Some people can look the other way when it comes to feral cats,'' she said. "I can't. It's a heart-breaking situation.''

She turned over her cats to the SPCA and went off to look for more cats. Miller said using food to lure strays into traps is easy, although males are easier to waylay than females.

"In general, males are more food-motivated, and females are more cautious, '' she said. "Males are chow hounds.''

On the Peninsula, scores of volunteers were looking for cats and bringing them to the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA in San Mateo, which performs about 800 free feral cat neuter surgeries each year, a spokesman said. Some of the larger stray cat colonies are at Stanford University and at Coyote Point.

Stein and his team of veterinary techs work assembly-line style in the SPCA hospital. Cages are lined up and numbered clothespins are clipped to their tops, indicating the lucky cat's place in line. All animals receive free checkups, antibiotics and vaccinations, in addition to Stein's incisive skills.

At the end of the day, Stein goes home to his own pets -- two frogs.

"Cats are OK,'' he said. "But I like frogs.''

E-mail Steve Rubenstein at srubenstein@sfchronicle.com

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

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