Seven-year-old Skylar Hunter has a future as a veterinarian. His love for animals, especially cats, is immense.

“They’re playful,” said Skylar, who attends Tangent Elementary School. “They’re fun to be with.”

“He’s been an animal lover forever,” said his mom, Mary Ramsey.

He loves them so much that he spent the last few months getting about 60 cats around his apartment complex spayed and neutered.

Linn County likely will need more efforts like Skylar’s to control the county’s cat population. This is more of an issue now than in the past, because Heartland Humane Society in Corvallis has stopped taking animals from outside Benton County.

Skylar’s efforts started with a litter of newborn kittens outside their South Albany apartment. “One day, I walked outside to feed the cats, and I saw these kittens,” Skylar said. “They were tiny.”

He wanted to find homes for the kittens, so his mom put an ad in the Democrat-Herald. “People were calling constantly,” she said.

Skylar met Jody Harmon of Corvallis as a result of the newspaper ad. Harmon works with Papa Inc., a Portland-based nonprofit that raises money for feline spaying and neutering.

Harmon said that she and Skylar have found homes for about 25 cats in the apartment complex. “Skylar’s a little go-getter,” she said. “He’ll run around and find kittens. I’ll be completely exhausted, but he doesn’t let you give up.”

Spaying and neutering cats was the next part of their partnership. Skylar would go through the complex asking if people needed their cats spayed or neutered. For those who said yes, Harmon would take the cats to the Countryside Veterinary Clinic in Jefferson, where Dr. Al Anderson would fix them with money from Papa Inc.

Harmon said they’ve had 70 cats fixed since September. Skylar’s mother put the number at around 58.

“Every time we thought we were close to being done, Skylar would find more,” she said. “He met a lady in the manufactured home park, she was out walking her dog and he went up and talked to her. We ended up getting three or four of her cats fixed.”

Meanwhile, stray cats continue to be an issue countywide. SafeHaven Humane Society, at the intersection of Highway 34 and Interstate 5, is full to capacity and has a waiting list.

“We’re hearing about a lot of kitten-dumping, and we’re probably only hearing about half of it,” said Christiana Gunderson, development director for SafeHaven. “We picked up a litter that was left at the AM/PM across the street, but this isn’t our thing.”

“SafeHaven has been working their hearts out,” said Doris Garron of Sweet Home, who runs KAT Adoption with her friend Vicki Lindley. They take cats to Petco stores in Corvallis, Salem and Keizer to get them adopted.

Garron said she hasn’t heard of any other organized efforts since Heartland stopped taking non-Benton County animals. She echoed Gunderson’s comment about hearing about cats being dumped across the county.

“What we need is a low-cost spay and neuter operation,” she said. “It just gets down to getting control of the numbers through spaying and neutering.”

Gunderson said SafeHaven is working on a low-cost spay and neuter program, which it hopes to start in February. But it doesn’t have space to house more cats, and Gunderson said she hasn’t heard back from the county or city of Albany on the cat issue.

The Albany City Council debated the issue a few years ago without coming to a conclusion. The county commissioners are not interested in taking on the issue, aside from considering any grant proposals brought to them.

Ian Rollins can be reached at ian.rollins@lee.net or 812-6077.