A lot of rescuers and vets are confused as to what is happening regarding TNR and City vouchers. Many vets no longer take the vouchers at all. The mandatory spay/neuter law created a lucrative, expanded market for sterilization surgeries, and vets no longer depend on City subsidies. Most do not take any City vouchers. They don't even bother apply to the City. Noreda used to accept the $70 voucher as full payment. Now they have a low cost day once a week I believe, where a feline kitten spay is $125, otherwise it is a much higher fee on other days. They no longer take City vouchers.
My primary vet, Adler Clinic in Reseda, now charges $250 for a female kitten spay. I hate to imagine how much it costs to spay a 70 lb. German Shepherd.
A lot of rescuers have told me they think TNR, trapping, and S/N of ferals is now illegal. They tell me their vets are no longer accepting City vouchers and therefore have stopped their TNR activities altogether. The City really needs to clarify to them that TNR is not illegal, only the City support through vouchers is illegal.
Now one can recommend lying, and for rescuers to try to get coupons from the city for owned pets and use them for ferals with “No one will know the difference” vets, but we are asking everyone to do a lot of lying and perform borderline illegal acts to circumvent the City’s TNR policy change as a result of the lawsuit. We are asking a lot people to become borderline criminals.
I doubt whether the city will give rescuers 30-40 vouchers for their “owned” cats, as they had been doing with feral vouchers. I understand that when you go to the shelters now, they ask a lot of questions specifically to preclude getting vouchers for ferals.
Ron Mason recently called the spaymobile people (He didn’t say for sure which one, but thought it was Amanda) asking for an appointment to sterilize a mom and three kittens. The person refused, calling him a rescuer, and saying they don’t do ferals anymore and he had to go elsewhere. Ron was shocked; he hadn't even mentioned vouchers or ferals. It was assumed he was a rescuer and hung up on.
The current $30 vouchers require an owner’s name, a name for the cat and a description. To use it for a feral that does not match that description is fraud. It would be fraud on the part of the vet and the rescuer. I don’t think a vet who is making the average vet practice of $1.3 million a year in Los Angeles is going to want to get into a legal hassle for a few dozen $30 certificates, when he can charge $250 to spay a kitten.
The mandatory S/N law along with Longcore’s lawsuit is adding up to a near term future bumper crop of killing of kittens and cats, and each and every additional cat and kitten death this coming year can be laid at his doorstep. Urban Wildlands and the various bird societies are gloating now at their "victory" over cats. I wish that gloat were wiped off their faces.
It might even be the case that some rescue group can bring a lawsuit challenging the mandatory S/N law or else the City's policy change, as creating a legal obligation done in an era when the City proised to support spay neuter, and then abandoning that support after the legal obligation was law, abandoning them to greedy vets who had a new market created by the new S/N law. Yeah to American greed. Maybe I ought to invent a slur for greedy vets so the PC people can go after me again for professional discrimination.
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