Cassidy Anne Porter is an animal lover who wants to do whatever she can to help prevent unwanted cats, even if she can't have them in her house.
Porter suffers from severe cat allergies, but wanted to help the animals, given the numbers of abandoned or feral cats in her neighbourhood and reports of animal cruelty directed at cats.
"I've just kind of been stewing on it for awhile," she said.
While she has a shelter with straw at her house in downtown Williams Lake, where she does what she can for feral cats in the area, she felt complacent knowing she wasn't stopping the problem of unwanted litters and overstretched animal shelters.
"I wanted to do something but I didn't know where to start," she said.
Aware the local SPCA was no longer able to fund the spay and neuter appointments for people who couldn't afford them, she decided she could try and help fundraise for appointments herself and remove some of the barriers for people and their pets.
She has an account with the Williams Lake Veterinary Clinic already for her two dogs Bo and Odin. So she set up an email to accept etransfers from donors, using her vet account to book and pay for spay and neuter appointments for people who can't afford them.
At the end of August, in 2024, she started a Facebook Page called WL Kitty Spay to help raise awareness and let people know what she was doing and put a call out on the page.
"Sure enough, people started sending money to it," she said. With no barriers to getting on the list for cat owners, the wait list was initially pretty long. People simply contact her through the Facebook page to get added to the list. Porter said the first appointment was booked by November.
She said the project is built on trust, so once people saw the success of an appointment, more funds began to come in and the list began to get shorter.
An even bigger help to reducing the list came when Dr. Ross Hawkes and his wife Tanya came in on a Saturday to do an entire day of spay and neuter appointments, once Porter had the funds. Porter said the two are planning to do another day in the new year as well.
"I'm hoping that will really speed up the wait list," she said.
Porter has been doing online prize raffles as well, to help encourage donations through her page, and so far has had 15 cats spayed or neutured.
"I was quite happy with that," she said. But she isn't quitting anytime soon.
Each appointment costs an estimated $300, depending on the cat's age, medical history, etc.
So far, she has raised nearly $4,000 towards helping the four-legged creatures who induce severe allergic reactions for her.
"This is my way of helping from afar," she said, noting she knows of other people in town doing great things for the feral cats already as well.
"I just wanted to make it as simple as possible," she said, adding this is one way to get to the root of the problem, by eliminating the barriers and helping people spay and neuter their pets.
For more on the project, go to WL Kitty Spay. E-transers can be sent to: wlkittyspay@outlook.com
