Maine’s animal shelters care for thousands of unwanted cats and dogs each year, but there are simply not enough homes for them all. This is what we call the pet overpopulation tragedy.

For the last five years, intake at the Bangor Humane Society has stayed steady at about 5,000 pets each year. Some of these unwanted pets have behavioral difficulties, but all too often the difficult behavior is that “she keeps having babies.”

The solution to the tragedy of pet overpopulation is a simple one – spaying for girls and neutering for boys. Pets that have been spayed or neutered simply do not have unwanted litters.

In addition, neutering often resolves undesirable behaviors such as aggression, territorial marking and roaming. On the other hand, two unaltered cats and all their descendants theoretically could number 420,000 in just seven years.

There are many reasons that people don’t get their pets spayed or neutered. The two that we hear every single day at the shelter are they just haven’t got around to it – and by now the cat has eight kittens – and they wanted to have it done, but can’t afford it.

In December, the PETCO Foundation awarded a $2,000 grant to Bangor Humane Society for a low-income spay-neuter voucher program. The demand for the vouchers left the fund nearly empty after just two months.

The State Animal Welfare Program is in the process of setting up a low-income spay-neuter program, funded in part by dog license fees and, we hope, topped off by donations made possible by the voluntary check-off box on tax returns that was approved by the Taxation Committee recently. These are great steps in the right direction, but in the end the onus is on pet owners to “fix” their pets, and help others “fix” theirs.

Spay Day USA was Feb. 24, and it is a reminder to everyone to save animals’ lives. If your pets aren’t “fixed” yet, do it now.

If your pets are already “fixed,” consider making a donation to a humane society to help low-income families care for the dogs and cats they love and share their lives with.

Becky Brimley is the director of animal welfare for the Bangor Humane Society, 693 Mt. Hope Ave., Bangor, ME 04401; telephone 942-8902.