Last October (2005), the Pawtucket City Council passed a law prohibiting the feeding of feral and free-roaming cats, a policy many animal-rights advocates deplored as cruel and unnecessary. Feline feeders face a potential $50 fine.

-In December 2005, the Warwick City Council approved a law requiring all cat owners to spay or neuter their pets by the age of six months or be subject to a $100 monthly fine. Pet owners who want to keep their cats unaltered must pay a $100 annual fee for every unaltered pet. Only licensed cat breeders are exempt from the law, which is based on an ordinance in East Providence.

-In June 2006, Rhode Island became the first state in the nation to require cat owners to spay or neuter their pets.

The new law requires cat owners to spay or neuter pets older than 6 months unless they pay $100 for a breeder's license or permit for an intact animal. Violators will be fined $75 per month, and all funds collected will be deposited into the spay/neuter account of the city or town where the violation occurs, and will be used to fund low-cost spay/neuter programs.

Proponents of the legislation say the bill could save thousands of cats from being killed each year and ease overcrowding in animal shelters. Private shelters and municipal pounds in Rhode Island killed 5,452 cats from 2002 to 2004, according to the state Department of Environmental Management.

-Among those who oppose the measure are breeders’ associations, feral cat advocates, the Rhode Island SPCA, and the Rhode Island Animal Control Officers Association.

-PawsWatch, a Newport cat rescue group believes this bill will encourage low-income pet owners to drop off cats at the pound or simply abandon them because they can't afford a spay or neuter procedure. The result, they believe, would be an increase in strays.

“Our position is not that requiring spay/neuter is a bad thing. Our position is that requiring spay/neuter (with penalties to enforce it) will not work unless and until funding is available to make it affordable.

Numerous large and successful low-cost spay/neuter programs around the country (for example, NH, Maine, Alabama, Jacksonville County FLA) have provided an opportunity to see what people will do when they can afford spay/neuter. In each of these instances, where funding was available, spay/neuter skyrocketed, and euthanasia declined. When unlimited, affordable spay/neuter was available, demand averaged five surgeries per 1000 people per year in a population. Taking into account Rhode Island's population size, and higher cost of living (so that vets will need to be subsidized by about $70 per surgery), that translates to a cost of about $350. per 1000 people per year (recorded numbers do not decline). For a state of roughly a million to 1.1 million people, this indicates a cost of approximately $350,000 per year.

In addition, that $350,000 must be sustainable over the long term. That means that there must be a plan in place to replace consistently depleted funds.

We do not see that funding in place yet, in Rhode Island. That is why we also support the work of RI Foundation -- which is looking for a way to make spay/neuter affordable. The proposed bill includes a $1. price increase for licensing, which will not be enough. It dictates that penalties will be directed to spay/neuter, but experience shows that substantial revenue cannot be collected in penalties. Also, VSA has mentioned having some grant monies available, which represents really good hard fundraising work; but it does not reach the amount needed.

There are successfully self-regenerating programs in place around the country, and Rhode Island needs that. Once such a program makes spay/neuter affordable, then it will make sense to require spay/neuter.

Experience nationwide shows that the requirement alone (without the funding) does NOT work.” (Source: www.pawswatch.org )

-“Nathan Winograd, director of the No-Kill Advocacy Center states: ‘There is a desire on the part of people who are tired of the killing to find a quick and easy solution. But these types of laws shift resources from programs that really work to enforcement. What the movement needs is not more animal control officers, but more programs that impact the death rate.’

Winograd challenges anyone to come up with an example where a mandatory spay/neuter program has resulted in a decrease in the death rate, noting that the most successful communities achieved their success without such punitive laws.

Instead of trying to find a quick legislative fix to shelter euthanasia, Winograd says communities need to try the programs that have proven success – foster care programs, off-site adoptions, sterilization before adoption, increased volunteer participation, and trap-neuter-return for feral cats, among others.” (Source: Best Friends Animal Society: The Legal Animal June 13, 2006)