Dear Supervisor:

I am writing to voice my concerns about San Francisco Animal Care & Control’s (“SFACC”) alarming new policies related to the intake of cats and kittens.

I am a resident of and homeowner in San Francisco, and I volunteer my free time in the community trapping feral cats so that they can be fixed/vaccinated, rescuing kittens born outside and friendly stray adult cats, and fostering cats and kittens in my home until they can be adopted. Over the past 5 years, I have personally trapped and/or rescued and/or fostered 347 cats and kittens.

I also work with and volunteer for several local rescue organizations here in SF including Toni’s Kitty Rescue (SF ACC’s kitten foster program provider), Give Me Shelter Cat Rescue, and Andrea’s Dream Rescue. Additionally, I am a volunteer at SF SPCA where I work with “behavior” cats and kittens at the shelter once per week.

Although SFACC continues to claim that it is an open admission shelter, since the pandemic began in 2020, they have stopped accepting stray cats and kittens unless injured, sick, or underage (under 8 weeks old). Additionally, a member of the public must first call ACC before they are granted an appointment to bring the animal in, that is, if you pass the “screening” process. SFACC staff encourage callers to either leave the animals where they found them, or to help the animals they find themselves by taking them into their home while attempting to locate the owner. If you have followed their advice and took the animal in but could not locate an owner, and you have housed the animal for more than a few weeks, you will then be told that you must pay an owner surrender fee if you want to bring the animal to SFACC. These ridiculous new policies have been put into place even though SFACC does not euthanize for space and is not an overcrowded city shelter.

Prior to these changes, I was able to, for example, bring to SFACC roughly a dozen cats from the block that I live on. These cats were friendly and healthy but they had been abandoned by their owner who had been evicted. Some were already fixed and some were not and were continuing to breed. Under the new policies of today, SFACC would refuse intake of those cats simply because they appeared healthy and not in distress (nearby good Samaritans, including myself, fed them on the sidewalk so they would not starve).

Additionally, SFACC has abandoned their once robust program for socializing feral kittens and now advises that any kittens 8 weeks or older should be spayed/neutered and put back out on the street. An 8-week-old kitten weighs 2 pounds and the survival rate of kittens born and left outside is 50% by 6 months of age. As someone who has successfully socialized over 80 feral kittens in my home as a foster, and more at the shelter as a volunteer, the majority of which were over 3 months old, I could not disagree more with this heartless policy. I have communicated my concerns to the shelter manager via email correspondence and have been told that the behavior program for feral kittens in the past was a failure, despite having no data to back up that claim and legions of volunteers and fosters who contradict it.

In addition to scrapping the behavior program for feral kittens, both in-shelter and foster, SFACC now also does not allow sick kittens to be placed into foster homes, even kittens that have a minor illness such as an upper respiratory infection. Placing undersocialized and/or sick kittens in a foster home reduces stress on the animals and affords them more personalized care and attention. It also opens up space at the shelter. A robust foster program is a cornerstone of progressive animal welfare, yet SFACC seems to be sending less animals into foster homes instead of more.

If asked about their new intake policies for cats and kittens, SFACC will tell you that the policies are based on national guidelines for animal shelters. It is true that this guidance exists from organizations such as the National Animal Control Association (NACA). However, I would argue that these guidelines of limiting intake to injured, sick, or underage and by appointment only, are overgeneralized and meant for communities that have shelters that are overcrowded and are euthanizing for space. That is not the situation in San Francisco. The facts are this in San Francisco:

1. SFACC has not euthanized for space, to my knowledge, in well over a decade.
2. SFACC has a brand new $80 million, 65,000 square foot, state of the art facility, paid for by taxpayers.
3. SFACC has an abundance of foster homes at their disposal.
4. SFACC has an abundance of rescue partners at their disposal.
5. SFACC has a robust adoption program and social media presence.

So why is SFACC doing less and less, instead of more for the animals of San Francisco? As a taxpayer and an animal advocate, I expect SFACC to use their abundance of resources to expand services to help more populations of animals in need, not create barriers to services and transfer responsibility onto members of the public.

Sincerely,

Amy Jones