Flatbush Cats, an animal rescue group based in Brooklyn, unveiled its brand-new, $2 million clinic Monday afternoon — aimed at providing more affordable vet care to the surrounding communities and helping to address the overpopulation of cats in New York City.
Officials at the nonprofit 3,700-square-foot clinic expect to fully open up the location in mid-September, and hope to ramp up to more than 7,500 spay and neuter procedures per year, Flatbush Cats founder Will Zweigart said.
In addition to offering spaying and neutering and other lower-cost veterinary services to pet owners and rescue groups, the site will be used to host training sessions for rescuers.
“This is badly needed, and we are really excited to get started,” he said.
Animal groups like Zweigart’s say that overcrowding in the shelters and streets is now at a dire level. Animal Care Center, the city’s shelter system, reached “critical capacity” in July and stopped allowing people to surrender cats. The three ACC shelters took in more than 1,200 stray dogs during the first five months of the year, a roughly 50% increase from the same period of 2022, officials there said earlier this month.
“We are seeing more cats dumped outside, we are finding friendly cats outside all of the time, and with the shelters overcrowded, a lot of people just don’t have options for what to do,” he said.
Spay and neuter procedures at Flatbush Veterinary Clinic will cost approximately $225 for cats and slightly more for dogs — whereas the cost at a private vet can range between $250 and $2,500, according to Lemonade, a pet insurance company.
Lindsay Branch, rescue program manager at Flatbush Cats, estimated that there are about 500,000 stray cats in New York City.
“So part of what we are doing is making sure that those cats get what they need, whether that is an indoor home if that is what they would like or spayed and neutered and returned to their outdoor home,” Branch said.
The process through which feral cats are placed back outdoors after being spayed or neutered so they cannot reproduce is called Trap, Neuter and Return. Cats and kittens that are friendly to humans and amenable to living indoors are given vet care, socialized, and placed up for adoption.
Flatbush Cats currently has about 130 cats and kittens in foster homes, and the organization has taken in some of the felines after they were abandoned.
“All of these cats are from the basements, backyards, garbage cans of Flatbush,” Branch said.
One cat, Pavlova, had been let out of a car by a well-known feeding station for feral cats. Another cat had been left in a carrier in an apartment building entryway with a note, saying, “I tried the shelter. I tried rescue groups. No one could help me,” Branch said.
Although the situation has worsened in recent years, the issue of cat overpopulation in New York City is not a new one. Zweigart, who previously worked in advertising, described how he founded Flatbush Cats several years ago.
“My partner and I were seeing cats on the street everywhere, fighting to survive,” he said. “We got involved as volunteers and we did what we could as individuals, but we learned pretty quickly that the reason why there were so many cats outside on the street was because our neighbors and our community members lacked affordable access to basic veterinary care.”
So Zweigart set out to address this by building the clinic, and he enlisted support from politicians and celebrities in the cat world and beyond along the way.
On hand for Monday’s festivities were elected officials, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams as well Councilmembers Farrah Louis and Justin Brannan, who presented the rescue group with a $150,000 ceremonial check to represent funding allocated in the 2024 city budget.
Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist and former host of the television show My Cat from Hell, and actress Rosie Perez, who serves as a Flatbush Cats Advisory board member, also attended Monday’s celebration.
Perez recalled her first meeting with the Flatbush Cats crew and said she cried on the way home from the dinner.
“I wish they were around when I was a kid. A kid from Brooklyn who grew up in abject poverty, who didn't even think about owning an animal, didn’t even think about having a pet because of the cost involved,” Perez said. “It just touched my heart in a very, very deep way.”