SCRANTON, Pa. — Eastern PA Animal Alliance is a non-profit, low-cost spay and neuter clinic in NEPA. EPAA has a location in Wilkes-Barre that is open on Mondays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, EPAA goes mobile, traveling to Scranton and the Mount Pocono area. The techs with EPAA showed Newswatch 16 inside the mobile clinic, where thousands of stray and feral cats are fixed each year.
"They reproduce exponentially, they reproduce when they are in heat and when they're not in heat. So they're induced ovulaters it's called, so they reproduce no matter what," said Katrina Coviello, Eastern PA Animal Alliance Anesthetic and Recovery Technician.
As of now, EPAA will be closing its doors on June 5 because their full-time veterinarian is "pursuing a different outlet in veterinarian medicine." Now the team of techs is looking for a new vet so that closure does not happen.
"If we wind up closing our doors and there is not enough places for people to take their feral cats in the community to be fixed, spayed and neutered, it's going to be an absolute crisis," said Sheri Sakosky, Eastern PA Animal Alliance Anesthetic Technician.
In 2023, EPAA fixed 3,823 community cats, meaning strays or ferals, as part of the Trap, Neuter, Release program. That is not counting the spaying and neutering EPAA does for pets and rescues. So if you say about 4,000 cats a year, times 3 litters per cat, and 3 cats per litter, EPAA prevents about 36,000 stray cats from being born each year. And that is a lowball number because strays can have more than 3 litters in their lifetime, and most litters have more than 3 cats per litter.
"That number is crazy. How many you're preventing, and it's not just preventing litters, it's preventing a lot of suffering," Sakosky said.
Starvation, infections and injuries from attacks by predators, employees with EPAA see that suffering firsthand every day. They say closing will also impact the more than 15 rescues in the area who use their low-cost services. They say they are open to anything to prevent the closure—hiring a full-time vet, a part-time vet, or even veterinarians at local clinics coming in once or twice a month.
"If we don't go to the source, which is spaying and neutering everything, we'll never make a dent. We need to keep up with the spay and neuter and we need to put the word out that we're looking to hire," said Coviello.
The job is paid; it is not a volunteer position. If you are interested in applying, you can email EPAA - epaaonline2009@gmail.com. You can also stay up-to-date with hours of operation over the next month and beyond by checking out the website and Facebook page.
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