In 2005, The Board of Directors of The National Humane Education Society (NHES) created the NHES Alliance Partner Program, which works collaboratively with and provides major funding to a select group of other deserving humane organizations, whose work embodies the successful implementation of NHES’s mission and/or one of NHES’s Guiding Principles. 

Operation Catnip exemplifies NHES’s 10th Guiding Principle:  “To advance programs for the humane sterilization of cats and dogs in order to reduce their overpopulation.”  

NHES first became aware of Operation Catnip in 1998 when Dr. Julie Levy, president of Operation Catnip, contacted NHES in search of start-up funding.  In response, NHES was able to provide a portion of the start-up funds.  Then as now, Operation Catnip is worthy of distinction, not simply because of the increasing number of feral cats that it has spayed and neutered each year—thereby humanely preventing the birth of hundreds of thousands of feral kittens—but also because of Operation Catnip’s emphasis on education and its volunteer base that includes veterinary students.  NHES believes that these veterinary students will take their first-hand experiences with Operation Catnip into their professional careers, where they will further decrease the killing of healthy animals through effective spay/neuter endeavors in the future.

In 2006, Operation Catnip had a Record Breaking Year.  Volunteers at the free monthly clinics provided veterinary care to and sterilized 2,165 cats; the 16 private veterinary clinics participating in the Outreach program sterilized 576 cats; the students at the University of Florida Shelter Medicine Program sterilized 224 cats; and an additional 760 cats participating in the Maddie’s Outdoor Cat Program were sterilized.  All together, a total of 3,725 stary and feral cats were spayed, neutered, vaccinated, and treated for parasites in 2006—a 37% increase over 2005.

To learn more about Operation Catnip, please visit them on the web at www.operationcatnip.org