The Windsor-Essex County Humane Society's veterinary clinic is celebrating a big milestone heading into its tenth year in service.
On Saturday, March 12, the public spay and neuter clinic performed its 50,000 surgery, with a female cat named Cheddar the milestone patient.
Spay and neuter surgeries are done in an effort to limit the number of homeless cats in the area.
Melanie Coulter, Executive Director of the Windsor-Essex County Humane Society, says spaying and neutering is important for pets, pet owners and the community.
"We know when our clinic opened, one of the key drivers was the fact that we were experiencing massive over population of cats in our community and spaying or neutering is really the only way out of that. We've seen the effects of the clinic, we've seen the number of cats coming into this shelter has dropped pretty much every year," she says.
Coulter says they hope to do more surgeries moving forward.
"Last year was a record year for us for spays and neuters , we did more public surgeries generally and more community cat surgeries than we've ever done before, and we're already ahead of last year, so we're really excited to see how many we can do this year," she says.
Coulter says the Spay-it-Forward fund is helping them subsidize spay and neuter services.
She says a free community cat package is offered to all community cats.
"We do a free ear tip, microchip and vaccine to keep that outdoor community cat population healthier, this helps subsidize that. It also helps subsidize some cats that come in that need to be spayed or neutered and the owner or the caregiver might not be able to afford," she adds.
Donations made to the Windsor-Essex Humane Society will be matched dollar for dollar for up to $5,000 in the month of March and can be made on the WECHS website.