Sedate, shave, snip, cuddle. Sedate, shave, snip, cuddle.

With cool efficiency and warm smiles, volunteers spayed or neutered 67 cats assembly-line style in just a few hours on Saturday.

Similar cat clinics are held monthly at Stautzenberger College as part of Operation Felix, a collaboration between the area s animal-friendly groups that aims to reduce the stray cat population.

“It s very rewarding, because I know for every cat we spay, it s a few less kittens we ll be seeing at our clinic as strays,” said Dr. Susan Sieban of the Holly Farms Animal Care Center on West Bancroft Street.

Dr. Sieban is one of 31 veterinarians who volunteer time to perform the surgeries.

Since Operation Felix began in July, 2002, the free clinics have spayed or neutered 875 cats. About two-thirds of those cats were pets belonging to people who could not afford the surgery, and the rest were feral cats.

Volunteers use box traps to capture feral cats and then they transport them to the clinic. After they are spayed or neutered and treated for illnesses, the cats are returned to neighborhoods where program organizers know they are being fed.

Steve Serchuk, who helped create Operation Felix, said preventing feral cats from reproducing will reduce their numbers over time, whereas euthanizing stray cats allows other fertile cats to take over the territory.

“We re dealing with a solution, not the symptoms. The cats that are out there are the symptoms of a problem, which is that people do not spay or neuter their pets,” he said.

Many people take in stray cats and cannot afford to pay more than $80 to get them spayed or neutered. When the cats have kittens, the owners may let them go into the wild if they cannot find them good homes, said Aimee St. Arnaud, Operation Felix coordinator.

Releasing feral cats that have been spayed or neutered back into neighborhoods is a controversial solution to the cat overpopulation problem, but Operation Felix also does surgeries on owned cats.

Operation Felix has provided free surgery for pets in more than 240 households. If people cannot transport their pets to the clinics, some of the project s 172 volunteers pick up the cats and drive them to Stautzenberger.

Holly Gusky had two cats fixed through Operation Felix.

“I am a single mom raising two teenage daughters and trying to buy my home, so a cost like this is something I couldn t afford,” she wrote in a thank you letter to the program. “We are all animal lovers and it seems like people are always leaving us animals in our alley and we end up taking them in. This Operation Felix is a good thing.”

In addition to reducing the reproductive potential of Toledo s cats, Operation Felix offers hands-on training for students learning about veterinary medicine at Stautzenberger and Penta County Vocational School.

Mark Walsh, a senior at Penta, helped prepare equipment and restrain cats for pre-surgery sedation at several Operation Felix clinics. On Saturday, he took home a little souvenir: a stray cat. The tortoiseshell cat was declawed, so it would not have been able to defend itself in the wild.

“I ve learned quite a lot,” he said. “I love doing these clinics every time.”

Operation Felix began with a $25,000 grant from the city of Toledo and matching private donations. Next month, it will receive $15,000 from the Kenneth Scott Charitable Trust, a group in Cleveland that gives money for animal-related programs.

The groups working together on Operation Felix - Planned Pethood, Maumee Valley Save-A-Pet, Paws and Whiskers Cat Shelter, Toledo Animal Shelter, and the Toledo Area Humane Society - are also trying to help the Toledo Zoo solve its stray cat problem.

A few months ago, the zoo announced that it will trap feral cats and euthanize those unsuitable for adoption. Zoo officials said the cats could pass diseases to the zoo animals.

Over the next year, the area s animal groups will provide free spaying or neutering for owned cats in neighborhoods near the zoo, and zoo veterinarians will put identifying microchips into pet cats for $5 each. Zoo workers will scan all cats they trap for microchips and return pet cats to their owners.

“The last thing we want to do is euthanize a cat that belongs to somebody,” zoo veterinarian Dr. Thomas Reichard said.

The zoo will also work with animal groups to distribute educational flyers to adjacent neighborhoods, urging people to spay or neuter their pets and keep their cats indoors.

Toledo city councilman Rob Ludeman donated $2,000 from his discretionary fund for the program. He visited an Operation Felix clinic earlier this year.

“I was impressed with the care the cats received and the number of people that were involved,” he said. “We need to help solve the zoo s problem and create awareness that cats should be spayed or neutered.”

First Published November 10, 2003, 12:41 p.m.