Maple Ridge Times

Wednesday » August 8 » 2007

Animal shelters littered with cats
Many people give up their pets before heading off on summer vacation.

Danna Johnson
The Times

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

They're getting over the worst month of the year.

While many lucky residents are out on local lakes, soaking up sun and planning their vacations, the volunteers of Katie's Place have been run off their feet, worked to the bone, and using every problem-solving skill they've collectively come to possess to find homes for everyone else's abandoned or surrendered cats.

"People are on vacation and they're not thinking of adopting, and they're certainly thinking of surrendering now, right before they go on holidays," said Katie's Place spokeswoman Brigitta MacMillan.

If there's even an inkling that a family might want to get rid of its pet, now is the time the decision is made, she said, so as to avoid kenneling it or having a friend or relative housesit while the family takes off on vacation.

And the result of this, she said, is a packed shelter.

Currently, MacMillan figures Katie's Place has about 120 cats and kittens both in the shelter and out in foster homes. She's got a foster cat, Sophie, taking up space in her home until more room becomes available at the shelter.

Already once this year MacMillan said, Katie's Place has had to turn cats away as a result of being overfull.

"It nearly broke our hearts," she said, noting this was the first time an animal has been denied.

"Since then we have bent over backwards not to have a tipping point," she said. "We have scrounged up more foster homes and I had to clean out my father's stuff from our back room so I could put little Sophie in there," she said.

So far, she said, shelter staff is "hanging on by our fingernails," but they're hanging on, she added, and that's the important part.

But because they are constantly running at capacity, MacMillan said there's little opportunity to help out other communities facing the same challenges.

In a recent Province article, Coquitlam Animal Shelter manager Andrea McDonald said they were overrun. That facility comfortably holds 25 cats, and 67 felines were calling the space home.

Having so many animals crammed into such a tiny space leaves the cats and kittens particularly susceptible to respiratory infections.

And despite this bleak picture painted of animal shelters, Maple Ridge SPCA branch manager Hugh Nichols said this summer is actually a little better than in years past.

The local SPCA is finding huge success in its Petcetera adoption centres, and is working hard alongside groups like Katie's Place to adopt out pets.

"We have a fairly extensive list of rescue societies that help us out," Nichols said, explaining that because the SPCA has branches throughout the province its able "to network a little better than the Coquitlam pound."

"If we run into situations where we're overcrowded we contact our rescue groups, and for the most part they've been able to help."

And should, as unlikely as it may seem, the local shelter have space Nichols said they're happy to take cats from other, more crowded shelters.

"We just went through a bout of upper respiratory infection and the way we dealt with it is to move all of our cats into foster care for five or six days," he said. Doing so makes certain that the other, healthy shelter cats don't become ill.

"We're moving animals around all the time, and that's the real secret," Nichols said. "We're really able to rely on foster homes."

But even Nichols admits that summer does often leave time for relaxing for shelter staff and volunteers.

But there's hope for the future, he said, explaining how there have been fewer kittens dropped off this year -- a trend he hopes continues.

"It's been 31 years we've been spaying and neutering at low cost and it used to be 10 years ago you could set your watch by the kittens that would come in springtime," he said, adding that's not the case this year.

"We don't see a lot of kittens here," he said, and fewer kittens means the adult cats are being scooped up regularly.

Cats and kittens are available to good homes from both the Maple Ridge SPCA shelter located at 10235 Jackson Rd., or by calling at 463-9511. The adoptable animals are also pictured online at www.spca.bc.ca/Maple Ridge.
© Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows Times 2007