FixNation of Los Angeles officially opened its doors to the public on July 16, 2007 and is the first of its kind organization dedicated to reducing the population of homeless stray and feral cats by providing full-time, free spay/neuter services to caregivers of community cats and low-cost services for tame companion cats. When I was presented with the opportunity to interview with one of the founders, Karn Myers, I jumped at the chance. FixNation had recently made the news with an exciting funding raising event in honor of World Spay Day on February 28th called “FixNation’s 2012 Spay Day Celebration.” Our friend Jackson Galaxy of My Cat From Hell was the special featured guest and I just knew this was an organization I wanted to be affiliated with and help spread the good word about.

Karn and Mark

I cannot begin to tell you how dedicated these people are. Karn and her husband, Mark Dodge, began their philanthropic cat walk back in the 90’s by supporting animal charities and volunteering, which eventually led them to Best Friends Animal Society (BFAS) in Los Angeles. Karn admits back then, she was relatively naive in relation to the homeless cat situation, but when she came face to face with two women feeding a colony of feral cats on the adjacent property to where she worked, she quickly befriended the caregivers and began her yearlong education into the vast world of homeless stray and feral cats. She and Mark eventually approached BFAS about creating a program dedicated to spaying and neutering homeless cats and in 1999 “Catnippers” was born as an all-volunteer, bi-monthly clinic that has been responsible for fixing over 16,000 homeless cats since 2000.

The FixNation facility.

With the success of Catnippers, Mark and Karn saw that a permanent, full-time facility would help the many more cats in the Los Angeles area and they began their never ending quest for funding. After much hard work, blood, sweat, tears and devotion, FixNation received 501(c)3 nonprofit status in March of 2006. I cannot stress enough what a feat that was and continues to be. While it might seem like an easy process on paper, continuing to raise money, particularly in an unstable economy, is an enormous amount of work with no guarantees. Factor in creating public awareness, finding volunteers, teaching and implementing TNR programs, along with spaying and neutering close to 80 cats a day, and I think you can begin to see the whole picture.

This cat has been trapped and will be released back into its colony after being fixed.

Karn and Mark were one of the lucky ones when they started FixNation. Best Friends was a big contributor and they were  recipients of grant monies by PetSmart Charities, Inc. and also received funding from many caring and compassionate indiviuals, as well as the  ASPCA and Found Animals Foundation. But, the PetSmart Charities grant expired at the end of last year, and in a crushing injunction issued by a City of Los Angeles Superior Court judge last year, the city that previously contributed significantly to the nonprofit is barred from subsidizing or promoting the TNR program (which affected other TNR agencies, not just FixNation). In a heated debate of cat advocates versus bird people, the Audubon Society sued the City of Los Angeles, claiming the TNR program violates environmental laws – in a nutshell, the Audubon Society estimate that there are about 160 million feral cats nationwide that are responsible for the death of 500 million birds a year. As a result, not only was funding taken away from FixNation, but the city could not release feral cats from shelters to organizations like FixNation; conduct public outreach about the program; refer complaints about feral cats to trap-neuter-release groups; or waive cat-trap rental fees until environmental studies were conducted. (Los Angeles Times)

These are some of the tame companion cats that are awaiting low cost spay and neutering services. The feral cats that FixNation sterilizes are kept in traps before and after surgery. Clearly FixNation is providing an invaluable service to the Los Angeles community and it is a shame that funding is being hindered by the court ordered injunction that bars the city from subsidizing or promoting the TNR efforts.

While I have my own rather predictable opinion of the Audubon studies, that is a discussion for another time (if you are curious about the cats killing birds debate in general, check out this well written article by Peter Wolf of Vox Felina). Suffice it to say, it was a very big blow to FixNation and that is where Karn and I really bonded. While she is soft spoken on the phone, she is a fighter. A dedicated, creative, and devoted fighter who envisions a day when every cat has a home. But this can only happen with public awareness and she and I both agree that in order for TNR to be successful, we can’t keep recycling the same information over and over within our collective cat communities about the critical need for spaying and neutering. We have to reach outside of that box to the people who really need to understand it and that is true for both public awareness as well as fund raising.

Dispatch is one of the countless cats FixNation has cared for and brought back into the community.

Along with Good Zoltan...

and "G" and "H."

The 2012 Spay Day Celebration that Jackson Galaxy helped to promote, was held at the Edgar Varela Fine Arts Gallery and featured the beautiful artwork  of Ansel Adam’s street photography. It brought in a new audience of sponsors and the tie in of Ansel’s art to the street cats of Los Angeles was brilliant. Jackson did an impromptu PSA for FixNation and the event was a huge success. Another fund raiser that brought in a nice mix of community attendees was the “Get Down” with the Carl Verheyen Band (Carl is one of the members of Super Tramp), performing as the “Cool Cats.” And probably the most heartwarming story was that of Doug Christensen in “One Man, One Hundred Cats”that stemmed from a Los Alamitos racetrack of all places.

Back in March of 2011, Doug filled out an application with FixNation for help – he estimated that there were about 100 cats on site and upon research; he realized just how quickly these 100 cats could turn into thousands. In what FixNation calls a “life-based program,” Doug was provided the traps he needed for the TNR, he was properly trained, and at least 67  cats  to date have been trapped and brought to FixNation where not only are they spayed or neutered for free, they are given vaccinations, flea treatment, and ear tipping (a universal practice done in TNR programs where the left ear of the cat has a small piece of the tip cut off to signify it has been spayed or neutered and does not have to be trapped again for sterilization). Doug chose to find a humane and manageable solution, rather than the other alternative, which is to trap and kill and Karn embraces him as the perfect example of what she envisions for other caring people and communities. And probably most touching, Doug’s efforts were embraced by the other racetrack employees and these cats continue to coexist with the racetrack horses, companions in the stable to their much larger four-legged friends!

Cat and horse co-existing in complete harmony at the Los Alamitos racetrack.

Another aspect that I applaud wholeheartedly is that FixNation visits Los Angeles schools to teach the younger generation about responsibility and humanity.  It is the grass roots approach of educating the youth, who then can embrace and make this knowledge part of everyday mainstream life, which is vital to the ongoing success of TNR programs and reducing cat overpopulation. While we would hope that everyone would embrace this concept, Karn feels the youth are the ones that will really make the difference.

In Karn’s words, FixNation is the “Ground Zero” of responsible TNR. They hope to serve as a working model for other organizations to follow suit by demonstrating the effectiveness of TNR in a large urban environment. As it stands, since its inception, they have sterilized over 65,000 cats to date. Considering that cats can reproduce at an alarming rate  – an unspayed/neutered cat pair leads up to 5,000 cats in 7 years – clearly one does not need to be a mathematician to know FixNation is providing an invaluable and humane service to the community. I love the concept of TNR, I love the group, and I hope you will all take the time to be a part of this effort and keep the momentum going, whether it be by sharing this post, tweeting about it, writing your own post, or by donating money or non-medical items such as litter, newspapers, towels and cat food.  It’s all about the well-being of the cats to live with peace and dignity within their respective communities and that’s really all that matters.

  Please be sure to watch Jackson Galaxy’s PSA and share as well!