After closing its doors and surrendering its animals to volunteers, a local cat shelter is taking the necessary steps to quell complaints about offensive odors — but the organization’s director says she needs help from her supporters.
As the Massapequa Observer previously reported, Joanne Monez, director of All About Spay Neuter Inc. in Massapequa, was forced by the Town of Oyster Bay to close her shelter last month following claims of town code violations, as well as criticism from a neighboring business and its landlord over a foul smell coming from the shelter.
Following a fierce Facebook fracas, Monez began to look for solutions that would satisfy all parties. She hired an engineering firm to inspect the shelter and after doing so, was told the solution could cost upwards of $35,000.
“The firm said the best way to ensure there is no odor is to install an air purification system that has an air handler that will bring fresh air into the adoption center,” said Monez.
In order to raise funds for this monumental investment, Monez has turned to her throngs of cat-friendly supporters. She set up a donation page here, where she encourages supporters to give anything they can.
“We have the best and most loyal supporters,” she said. “This support was not built up from this incident. The support has grown over the 12 years we have been doing rescue, helping people help animals. We are the only all volunteer animal organization that goes to people’s residences and traps feral cats, transports them to spay/neuter, recovers them and then releases them into their colonies. And we stay until every cat is trapped to stop the vicious cycle of reproduction.”
All About Spay also takes in kittens and friendly adults found in the field. She said she has been called out on Christmas Day, Mothers Day, Fourth of July, Easter Sunday — even sometimes after midnight — to help sick and injured cats.
“We have two contracts for TNR (trap/neuter/release) — one with Town of Oyster Bay and one with Town of North Hempstead,” she said. “We have TNR’d thousands of cats in Queens, Brooklyn, Nassau and Suffolk counties and found safe adoptive homes for over 1,500 cats, too.”
Monez said cat colonies can get out of hand in a hurry. She said that female cats are capable of having three to four litters in a season, so a person with two cats on their property (a male and a female) can end up with 40 cats in a year. And according to Monez, without All About Spay, cat colonies will have plenty of time to grow.
“If we cannot reopen, the Town of Oyster Bay will have no TNR program,” she said. “People that are calling me now, I am referring them to the Town of Oyster Bay animal shelter, who is telling them there is a year wait for them to trap the cats and bring them to the shelter for TNR.”
As she tries to raise funds for her new air purifier, Monez said the local cat population is busy raising its numbers unimpeded.
“All of our hard work at the Town of Oyster Bay is being wasted, as we cannot perform TNR and take in kittens off the street,” she said. “So the residents should be expecting exponential growth of the feral cat population in their town.”
