"Neuter Your Ex" this Valentine's Day with Tampa Bay animal rescue

Axios

07-02-2025

Sure, a romantic beach sunset is nice, but how about some good old-fashioned revenge?
State of play: A Tampa Bay animal rescue is running a "Neuter Your Ex" fundraiser just in time for Valentine's Day.
For just $20 (a steal!), Rescue Pets of Florida will name a cat after your ex at the shelter's next spay/neuter event this Sunday.
"Because some exes are worth forgetting," the website says, "but animals always deserve love."
How it works: The feline tributes are community cats who are trapped, neutered or spayed, then released back to where they were found, a process known as Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) that's designed to help with feral cat overpopulation.
The volunteer-run rescue will then post a photo of each cat named after an ex on social media.
Money collected during the campaign will support TNR programs and the nonprofit rescue, which has five adoption centers at PetSmart locations from St. Petersburg to Spring Hill, marketing director Sarah Davis told Axios.
The rescue also recently closed on a farm in Plant City that's home to rescue horses, cows, pigs and more, Davis said.
The big picture: Rescue director Jeanine Cohen came up with the idea after seeing other rescues doing their own versions, Davis said — and a quick search on Facebook shows just how far it goes.
Shelters from Des Moines, Iowa, to Bakersfield, Calif., to Baltimore are offering similar campaigns.
Zoos are also getting in on the anti-Valentine's Day trend. As our friends at Axios Columbus reported, the zoo in their city is letting donors name superworms after their exes that are then fed to two sloth bears.
Interested paw-ties can sign up online here.