An Auckland woman says she has been left fostering a stray cat after she was advised to abandon it by the SPCA.
The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, told 1News she saw a small one-year-old cat emerge from a reserve across the road from her house earlier this month in search of food.
“A neighbour said they had seen her too and had tried to hit her with a broom a few times to scare her away. That’s why I offered to try and help her,” she explained.
But when she took the cat - who had not been desexed - to the SPCA’s Māngere centre, she was instructed to "let this young, homeless cat loose to the mercy of the males in the neighbourhood who have been stalking her".
"They advocate leaving stray cats somewhere in the community to roam, fight, eat what they can find.
"They all said they don’t care for healthy cats because they are too busy."
She said she received death threats after sharing her concerns on social media. However, she insisted she "wasn’t trying to be mean to the SPCA".
"They just don’t have the resources to cope, but that leaves a lot of animals with no choices. These cats I found are lost or abandoned pets, not feral animals."
The woman is now fostering the cat, who she named Cindy Clawford, while she searches for a suitable home for the feline.
SPCA support services manager Laura Millar told 1News there are "hundreds of thousands of stray cats in Auckland" and just two shelters in the area, meaning they are "quite limited for capacity".
"We prioritise sick, injured and vulnerable animals so strays that have been hit by cars, things that are in urgent need of veterinary care by our animal welfare team or vulnerable animals that would be unable to survive without our assistance such as neonatal kittens."
Millar said a mild winter and the lead-up to kitten season in the warmer months means they are "operating pretty much at capacity with sick, injured and vulnerable animals".
"If we have the space, absolutely, but unfortunately, this year, we just haven’t been able to be in a position where we’ve got space available in our Mangere centre to be able to take in healthy animals over the sick, injured and vulnerable that we’re seeing every day."
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