Meet Kathy Plowman, Animal Welfare Warrior

What do you do if there is no low-cost spay/neuter clinic in your area? If you are Kathy Plowman, Lake County animal advocate, you bring as many dogs and cats to the nearest available clinic as possible – even if that means a 3+ hour round trip.

Kathy’s interest in spay/neuter started when she noticed a group of uncared-for community cats in Lake County. She began feeding them, but soon realized that taking care of these animals meant more than just providing them with food and water. Many of the cats and kittens in the colonies had goopy eyes and runny noses, and some seemed to be really suffering. As the number of local cats continued to multiply, Kathy realized the only way to stop the suffering was to stop the animals from reproducing: spay/neuter.

Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) is the best way to humanely care for a feral colony, since altered cats are less likely to fight and become injured, fewer kittens are born into the wild where they can easily become sick, and all cats get vaccinated against preventable diseases.  As an animal lover, Kathy could not stand by and watch these colonies suffer. Someone purchased two traps for her, and her spay/neuter activism began in earnest.  Kathy set to work trapping local cats, and since she had no access to regularly recurring low-cost spay/neuter services in Lake County, she made the three-and-a-half-hour-plus round trip to Napa Humane’s Clinic several times each month to have them spayed and neutered.

Thanks to her amazing dedication, every cat in all 12 of the colonies she manages has now been brought to Napa Humane and altered. New arrivals who either find their way into the colony or are dumped there are spayed/neutered as soon as they arrive. And when Kathy comes across a friendly cat in her colony, she works hard to find that cat a loving home.

Once word got out that Kathy was driving to Napa Humane to spay/neuter these cats, other Lake County residents started to reach out to her for assistance in getting their own cats and dogs altered. And so Kathy expanded her crusade to make sure all pets in Lake County had access to spay/neuter.  She says, “Lake County is a poor community and people can’t afford to get their animals fixed. The cost of spay/neuter with a rabies vaccine can be around $500 at a veterinary hospital and people just can’t afford that when they are living hand to mouth.”  She told Napa Humane the people in her community really want to get their animals altered, but simply can’t afford it or are unable to make the trip to Napa themselves.

Lake County’s animals and the people who love them are lucky to have Kathy Plowman in their corner.  We first met Kathy in June of 2018 when she started bringing cats to our spay/neuter clinic, and since that time, she has brought us approximately 745 dogs and cats from Lake County for spay/neuter surgeries.  Her dedication and commitment to animal welfare is awe inspiring, and we are pleased that our Clinic plays a role in enhancing the lives of animals in Lake County.

Napa Humane operates the only ongoing, low-cost spay neuter clinic within the Napa-Lake-Solano tri-county area. Similar clinics continue to close in Marin and Sonoma counties. We are seeing an increased need for high-quality, low-cost spay-neuter surgeries, and we are stepping up to serve more animals than ever.

Will you join us – and Kathy – in this life-saving work?