Meows echoed through the halls of a single-story house in south Bend on Sunday as Sara Dice, the 27-year-old founder of the Bend Spay and Neuter Project, wearily prepared for another week.

By Thursday, with military efficiency, project veterinarian Dr. Byron Maas will spay or neuter about 150 cats and kittens on the stainless steel operating tables at the clinic, which opened last month.

Wild, or ”feral” animals – which make up about 40 percent of surgeries at the clinic – will be vaccinated, dewormed and groomed while they are sedated, Dice said. Then they will either be adopted, returned to where they were originally trapped or placed with farmers and ranchers as barn mousers.

”Most of these animals have never seen a vet,” Dice said. ”If they weren’t here, they would just have nowhere to go.”

Dice, who holds a full-time job managing her family’s construction business, moonlights as a cat crusader. With the help of Maas and a group of about 20 regular volunteers, she estimates the nonprofit has ”fixed” about 3,000 animals since its inception.

Dice started the spay and neuter project after she began trapping feral cats in 2001 behind a building at Ninth and Wilson streets.

She paid to have the cats spayed and neutered and then moved on to trap another ”colony” she had heard was living around the Costco store.

”I just started to realize the magnitude of the problem,” Dice said.

She called Dr. Maas, a local veterinarian, who donated his time operating on 37 cats from the Costco colony.

A partnership was born. Dice kept cats and equipment in her 1,200-square-foot garage in Tumalo, while Maas did surgeries whenever he could squeeze in the time at Eastside Animal Hospital in Bend.

Maas, 45, first became involved in spay and neuter work in 1994. He said he worked in the Cook Island chain in the South Pacific for a year, spaying and neutering cats and dogs that had begun to overpopulate the islands.

He said he hopes the Bend Spay and Neuter Project can eventually branch out to areas like Burns and Christmas Valley – where there are little options for controlling the population of cats.

”I think it’s going to be more of a regional approach, but it’s going to be a while before we get things under control here,” Maas said.

Making inroads on the Bend cat population meant more space was needed to handle the influx of cats.

When tenants renting from Dice’s father moved out of a house on Parrell Road in Bend, the clinic became a reality.

The doors of the clinic opened on Oct. 1. Maas quit his regular veterinarian job to focus on the spay and neuter project.

In-kind donations poured in. An electrician wired the house for free, an equipment salesman donated an expensive surgical table.

Low-income clients are the norm, Dice said. Many can’t afford to pay the suggested $30 donation.

Volunteers working regular schedules clean, repack surgical kits and help nurse convalescing cats back to health.

Jan Elrod, a retired teacher, said she began volunteering after Dice trapped feral cats at her ranch near Smith Rock.

Elrod, 59, said she began volunteering because Bend Spay and Neuter Project helps feral cats. Often, feral cats are euthanized when they’re brought to animal shelters, Dice said.

”The reason I continue to do this is (Dice) finds as much value in the feral cats as she does in the cute and cuddly ones,” Elrod said.

Bend Spay and Neuter Project officials are trying to raise $85,000-$90,000 annually to keep the clinic going. That would pay the salaries of Maas and a veterinary technician, Dice said.

Volunteers, other donations of work and equipment and a suggested $30 donation for spaying or neutering will pay for the rest, she said.

To donate, adopt or volunteer, call the Bend Spay and Neuter Project at 617-1010.