February is Beat The Heat Month

Who needs to beat the heat in February? Your neighborhood’s cats, that’s who.

The cat population in the U.S. is greater than the dog population, and it appears to be growing more rapidly in recent years. Cats’ reproductive cycles are more frequent than dogs’, especially in warmer regions. As a result, cats can have multiple “kitten seasons,” or times when more kittens are born than usual, each year.

In February, PetSmart Charities sponsored “Beat the Heat,” a promotion to reduce the number of homeless cats born during this spring’s kitten seasons.

Through this program, PetSmart Charities provided spay/neuter clinics with:

• grant funds to help lower the cost of spay/neuter surgeries for the public
• professionally-developed marketing materials
• funding and support to advertise and promote the campaigns in their local communities

Through Beat the Heat, 56 spay/neuter clinics completed more than 16,500 surgeries around the United States. These surgeries prevented the unplanned birth of countless kittens who might have otherwise ended up in local shelters and without a home.

Make “do the right thing” affordable

Beat the Heat enabled spay/neuter clinics to make a tremendous impact on the homeless cat population in their local communities. It also enabled pet parents to spay their cats when it otherwise might not have been affordable.

Steve , of Christiansburg, Virginia, wanted to do the right thing and spay his 3 female cats, Princess, Snowy and Baby. Because of PetSmart Charities’ Beat the Heat program, Mountain View Humane was able to do the surgeries for him at a price he could afford.

“Steve brought one in each day for 3 days so he would not have an empty house,” said Corrie Prater, of Mountain View Humane. “All 3 girls did beautifully in surgery and are now home with Steve.”

With another successful month of surgeries behind them, PetSmart Charities is working with clinics to prepare for June’s promotion, which provides subsidies for early-age spay/neuter surgeries for both puppies and kittens.