Pittsburgh’s free spay and neuter program will soon start back up, this time with new safeguards in place to stop people living outside city limits using the services.

In early February, the city announced it would be pausing the program, after an evaluation found “inappropriate” and “disingenuous” uses for the service. Non-Pittsburgh residents had been borrowing the city addresses of friends and family to have their pets spayed or neutered for free.

City Council members approved a phased re-start to the program during Tuesday morning’s meeting. 

In this first phase, the spay and neuter program will only be available for feral cats, Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt told City Council members last week. The part of the program where residents could get vouchers to have their pets spayed or neutered is still on hold.

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“Everybody’s very happy that spay and neuter is going to be continued,” Councilman Anthony Coghill said during a meeting last week. “Feral cats have been a really big problem.”

When the city paused the program last month, animal advocates were concerned that small rescues in the area would become overcrowded with cats.

“If cats cannot get fixed this spring, we are going to see a repeat of what happened during covid when all of the vets shut down their services and canceled spay and neuter appointments,” Jody Mader, a director at Catcall Rescue said at the time. “After that, the number of homeless cats skyrocketed.”

The focus on only feral cats should help the problem, city officials said, while they work out a larger plan to “reduce the opportunity for abuse but allow for a more robust program,” Mr. Schmidt said.

Over the next six months the city’s Department of Public Safety will work on a program that will allow specific people to register as a “trapper” which will allow people to catch feral cats, have them spayed or neutered through the city initiative and then release them back into the wild. 

The goal of this is to prevent people from trapping feral cats in the city, getting them spayed or neutered and then taking them to a shelter outside city limits and putting them up for adopting for a fee, Mr. Schmidt said. 

Mr. Schmidt said the city is also looking at “various options” for domesticated pets, including a “more thorough check” around residency verification. Pet owners might also have to sign a statement asserting that the pet is theirs and they live in the city. For pets, they will be checking dog licenses to ensure the dog is properly licensed and as a way to check the residency of the pet owner.

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The bureau of animal control will also do random follow-ups to check in on the animal and ensure that it really does belong to a city resident, Mr. Schmidt told City Council last week.

It’s unclear when the pet portion of the spay and neuter program will return. 

Hallie Lauer: hlauer@post-gazette.com

First Published: March 19, 2024, 6:28 p.m.
Updated: March 19, 2024, 8:25 p.m.