The Lava Street Veterinary Clinic is offering a 20 per cent discount on the cost of all cat desexing and free microchipping (at the time of desexing) until the end of February in response to a story in The Standard.

The article, published last week, highlighted how 26 cats were dumped outside the Warrnambool RSPCA shelter over two days, as well as many others that were surrendered.

Vet Hollie Adams said they wanted to help address the overpopulation of cats. “We really hope this helps our community to afford the care that these beautiful pets need,” Dr Adams said.

Practice manager Matt Adams said they had had an amazing response to the clinic’s Facebook post which shared the original article and the promotion details. “We decided to offer the discount because of the RSPCA being at capacity and a lot of it’s unneeded," he said. "It’s preventable. It’s a simple procedure to prevent it from happening. We live in a community where we all help each other out.”

RSPCA shelter supervisor Tracey Patterson praised the clinic and said it was a great initiative. “It’s great to see the vets getting on board and making desexing affordable and attainable for everyone,” Mrs Patterson said. 

She said cost was one of the deterrents for animal owners. “They get a free kitten and think they’ve got a few months to come up with the money and things keep getting in the way. The next thing they know is they’ve got a litter of kittens and another litter of kittens.” 

In the original article she said the shelter was full, calling for people to adopt a cat or kitten. She said staff were run off their feet on Friday and Saturday with people who read the article wanting to adopt. “It wasn’t just for the free adult cats, the kittens have been adopted as well.” Victorian RSPCA facilities, including Petbarn stores, are offering free cat adoption until January 31 (excluding kittens under four months).