Spay Day Is Coming Up—PETA Asks Hampton Roads Media to Help Stop More Homeless Pups and Kittens From Being Born

For Immediate Release:
February 19, 2015

Next Tuesday, February 24, is Spay Day, and we’re asking Hampton Roads, Va., media to help reduce our community’s homeless dog and cat crisis by encouraging their audiences to spay and neuter their dogs and cats.

In Virginia, more than 242,000 unwanted dogs and cats ended up in animal shelters in 2013. A whopping 6 to 8 million dogs and cats are turned in to shelters each year nationwide, and half of them have to be euthanized because there simply aren’t enough good homes for them. The solution is to attack the problem at its root: by spaying and neutering.

In honor of Spay Day, all three of PETA’s mobile veterinary clinics will perform spay and neuter surgeries at its Norfolk headquarters:

Where:       PETA’s Sam Simon Center, 501 Front St., Norfolk

When:        Tuesday, February 24, check-in begins at 7 a.m.

Appointments are required and can be made by calling PETA at 757-622-PETA (7382), extension 3. Other local organizations also offer low-cost spaying and neutering services—a full list is available here.

“The only way to ‘fix’ the homeless-animal overpopulation crisis is to ‘fix’ dogs and cats,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA helps people cut down on the number of puppies and kittens born into an already-overpopulated world by spaying and neutering—on Spay Day and every day.”

In addition to not contributing to the companion animal overpopulation crisis, sterilized animals live longer and happier lives, are less likely to develop cancer of the reproductive system, and, in the case of neutered males, are less likely to roam or fight.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.