Liz McCauley, executive director of the Cape Coral Animal Shelter (CCAS), is all too familiar with unspayed and unneutered pets ending up at her facility’s doorstep. She said most families who have furry friends typically have the means, resources, and education required to care for their companions and give them the best quality of life. Sometimes, however, families can fall short of this goal due primarily to financial pressures. This leaves shelters, such as CCAS and its 12 occupied kennels, unable to open their doors to another resident searching for the loving and forever home they deserve.
“It’s really sad and frustrating because meanwhile, we’re sitting with a kennel full of other animals that don’t have a home either, and now here’s puppies,” McCauley said. “So it’s very important to get your animal spayed and neutered.”
McCauley said that when a pet is not spayed or neutered, it contributes to overcrowding of animal shelters by introducing the possibility of an unplanned litter.
According to a study from the University of Florida, the COVID-19 pandemic initiated an influx of pet adoptions throughout the country. However, data compiled from over 200 clinics between 2019 and 2021 showed that nearly 3 million of those adoptees were not spayed or neutered, primarily due to staff and veterinarian shortages.
“We saw a lot of people adopting (during the pandemic),” McCauley said. “On the downside of it, a lot of spay/neuter services were considered nonessential. So, a lot of vets, a lot of vet clinics, a lot of places that do spay/neuter surgeries said we can’t do that now.”
To address the lingering effects associated with the increase of unspayed and unneutered pets, specifically in Southwest Florida, the CCAS collected about $25,000 through a state grant program called the Florida Animal Friend Grant. This allowed their initiative, “Operation: Fix It Florida” to come to fruition, providing over 400 sterilization procedures to pet owners who previously couldn’t afford the service.
“We really were trying to focus,” McCauley said. “We only had so much money. Twenty-five thousand dollars doesn’t go that far, and we really wanted to try to get the most for that and find the most, the people that needed it the most.”
Coming from a background where her mother opened and operated a low-cost spay/neuter clinic, Stefanie Ink Edwards, CEO and president of both Community Cooperative (CC) and Meals on Wheels of Southwest Florida, said it was disconcerting to see how many of the nearly 47,000 people served by CC in 2024 owned an unneutered or unspayed pet.
Community Cooperative, located in Fort Myers on Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard, is a nonprofit corporation that provides food pantry and soup kitchen services to Southwest Florida’s low-income and homeless populations.
“We serve similar clientele, right? Like if you’ve got a family who maybe they have pets at home, and they find themselves in a situation where they’re struggling to keep food on their table, I can pretty much guarantee you that they’re going to struggle to take their dog or cat to a veterinarian’s office or get them spayed or neutered,” Edwards said.
Spay and neuter procedures typically range from $200 to $900, depending on the clinic and the size of the animal. This reality for many pet owners who find themselves utilizing CC’s services made the partnership a perfect fit for both McCauley and Edwards, working together to alleviate both problems in one fell swoop.
“It was a very easy collaboration to come together to fight both overpopulation of pets, if you will, and food insecurity at the same time,” Edwards said.
But McCauley wants people to know that overpopulation of unwanted pets is not the only consequence of leaving your animal unspayed or unneutered—a common misconception. She said there are health concerns pet owners need to be wary of as well.
“It’s also a health benefit for the animal,” McCauley said. “That’s, I think, part of the education process. People think it’s either some way dangerous to them, or they shouldn’t do it for whatever reason.”
McCauley said female dogs can develop a condition called pyometra, a serious and life-threatening infection of the uterus in unspayed dogs.
“It’s deadly,” McCauley said. “By the time they discover it, usually, [it] can be terminal for the dog.”
McCauley also said that a possible health complication from not neutering a male dog is prostate cancer.
“So, there’s a lot of statistics on a lot of benefits to having them spayed and neutered, besides the fact of having so many of them die in shelters every year, and that’s what we’re trying to prevent,” McCauley said.
Dianna Perez, a pet owner of two cats and a dog, all of whom are fixed, has lived in Cape Coral for 16 years and said this is what it’s all about—saving lives and taking proactive measures.
“I don’t really believe that we should put them down just because we can’t afford them,” Perez said. “It’s wonderful that, you know, Cape Coral [CCAS] raises the money for the pets because, you know, we love our animals. Sometimes we love them more than people.”
McCauley said she looks forward to filling out the application again next year as nonprofit organizations, like the Cape Coral shelter, can only apply for the grant every other year. She also hopes to work with Community Cooperative again in the future, mentioning how it was a successful and productive operation.
In the meantime, she encourages other nonprofit organizations to apply for the grant and take advantage of this asset. Pet lovers can also lend a hand and fund the grant by purchasing the Florida Animal Friend license plate, where $25 from each renewed or purchased plate contributes to the grant.
“First of all, it’s really cute,” McCauley said. “It has a cute little dog and cat on it. And every time you see one of those, you know that the money has gone toward this grant program, and that’s what helps rescues like ours provide this free service for people.”
Both McCauley and Edwards say it takes a village to create real and lasting change. Without the support of other organizations and donations from the public, both entities would not be able to function and deliver results. For more information, go to CC and CCAS.
“One of my favorite quotes is, ‘all boats rise in a high tide,’ and I’m a firm believer of that with the work that we do and with the collaborations and partners that we have throughout Southwest Florida,” Edwards said. “We can’t do it alone. We can’t do it all well and so it’s great to have community partners and other organizations that we can rely on to give additional services, more support to the clients that we serve, and improving our organization as we grow and move forward.”
