By admin 
In a small, obscure house in Jakarta’s southern districts, a woman in full gear is quietly and efficiently desexing a tranquilized cat.
Next to the table, another four cats in diapers lie in a row, their bellies shaved and exposed with a freshly stitched wound, as they sleep off their anesthesia.
This is the world of Indonesia’s underground vets, who are working to decontaminate as many cats as possible to help slow the explosive growth of felines on the streets of big cities.
“Regularly trapping and neutering cats will help maintain the population for about two years, but if we don’t, the cat population will explode,” said Vivi Sebayang of Rumah Steril, an organization that captures street cats for sterilization and subsequently released.
With a group of volunteers, she organizes monthly cat catching sessions in Jakarta, usually around university campuses or train stations where people tend to feed stray animals.
“Every day it costs me quite a lot of money to buy enough food to feed 15 cats, but I don’t have any of my own, so that’s OK,” said Koh Aliong, a local shop owner who helps keep the stray population at a low level . university campus in the southern Depok district.
“People have been dumping little kittens here, so what else can I do but take care of them and feed them?” he said, as he helped the cat catchers catch cats for sterilization.
Jakarta’s feral cat problem
The Jakarta Provincial Food, Marine and Agriculture Agency estimates that there are 860,000 cats in the Jakarta municipal area alone.
An estimated 1.5 million feral cats live in Indonesia’s capital. (ABC News: Mitch Woolnough)
But that only covers about half of the greater Jakarta metropolis, meaning there are likely more than 1.5 million cats roaming the streets and gardens of Indonesia’s capital.
“Indonesians tend to move a problem instead of solving it,” says Sebayang.
“So if someone doesn’t like having a stray cat in their home, they will often take the cat and dump it at a wet market where there is some food,” she said.
She says cats often have litters of three or more kittens, and she is determined to stop that.
Her organization can sterilize a female cat for about $30, or about $25 for a male cat.
But not everyone is happy with it.
On the day the ABC visited, the vet who performed the surgeries declined to be named or identified, and Sebayang says her top priority is protecting the identities of the vets who perform the low-cost procedures.
“(Some) veterinarians are concerned that these procedures are being performed by people who are not qualified,” she said.
“Most veterinarians willing to join this activity are also concerned about the overpopulation problem.
“They make it clear to me that they don’t want to be bullied by other colleagues who don’t agree with this program, so I always protect them.”
She says vet clinics also have a commercial need to oppose her cheaper surgeries, as they usually charge about $50 to $150 for desexing procedures – more than what many people are willing to pay to desex a stray animal.
‘It feels like a gray area’
The extent to which local governments cooperate with such programs varies.
In Jakarta, local district governments often collaborate with organizations such as those in Sebayang to carry out cat desexing operations.
For example, the South Jakarta Maritime Food Security and Fishery Sub-agency recently said it would launch another sterilization drive in February with the aim of desexing 2,300 cats.
Once the cats have slept off the anesthesia, they are released back onto the streets. (ABC News: Mitch Woolnough )
Veterinary associations sometimes participate in such efforts.
But in the remote districts of the capital region, veterinary associations and local authorities are generally less supportive of organizations taking matters into their own hands.
“It feels like a gray area, but I think this is the only way to solve the problem,” Sebayang said.
She estimates that her organization has sterilized 10,000 cats in the past decade.
But it’s a drop in the ocean.
“I think it could take another 10 to 20 years before this problem finally gets better,” she said.