RSPCA ACT will be forced to shut its doors early on Wednesday, due to the high demand of kittens needing to be desexed.
The animal shelter will close at 1pm on Wednesday, in the bid to desex 25 to 30 kittens - five to six times the usual daily number - to help get on top of the bottleneck of cats needing to be adopted.
RSPCA has a total of 396 animals in care at the moment. Of those, 299 are cats either at the shelter or in foster care. The shelter itself is only built to house about 250 animals.
"We have more animals coming in, than animals going out and our staff can't physically catch up. It doesn't help that our vet clinic is not fit for purpose," RSPCA ACT chief executive Michelle Robertson said.
"We have to just stop and focus on bringing some of the cats that are in foster and get them desexed. Then we're going to try and do a push-out to PetBarn as an adoption portal and to get as many adopted as we can.
"Last year this time, we had 311 animals in care which we were saying was high. Today it's 396, so that is a quarter more than what we had when we already thought that number was high."
Logistically, it's a large undertaking.
All of the animals need to be taken out of the vet clinic, so there is room for the cats needing to undergo the surgery.
It's all hands on deck - and depending on how Wednesday's efforts go, it may need to be the first of many to help deal with the growing number of cats and kittens.
"Our numbers are very large at the shelter and also in foster care," Ms Robertson said.
"The frustration for me is that four years ago, we've got a commitment that the ACT government was going to support us and build us a fit-for-purpose facility.
"Then we can do the work as well as a lot of the preventive educational stuff that I feel is essential, or else we're always just going to be in this problem stage."
Ms Robertson said there were a few different factors contributing to the large number of cats.
First, it was people who hadn't desexed their cats having unwanted litters, and the cost of living has also increased the number of surrenders. On top of that, stray cats find their way into RSPCA's care.
"Cats can multiply incredibly quickly. In one season, you could end up with hundreds and hundreds of cats which is what's happening," Ms Robertson said.
"But the numbers are frightening and we only have so many people working here and it puts pressure on our team, our volunteers, the vets. It's enormous."
