I figured that my experience at the Athens County Humane Society cat shelter would be similar. I started going to the shelter once a week. At first my duties mainly consisted of cleaning and feeding the cats. Shortly thereafter I started helping the manager, Marla Brooks-Verity, with medical procedures. I learned how to flea treat, deworm and give shots to cats and kittens. I also learned how to hold the cats by the scruff of their neck to keep them still for drawing blood for tests or giving shots.
After only working there for a month, I took my first foster kitten home to my dorm room. I quickly learned that kittens at the shelter had little chance of surviving their time there. Because of their weaker immune systems, kittens would become ill in the shelter environment after days of arriving. Feline upper respiratory infections ran rampant.I continued working at the shelter for the rest of the year. It quickly became an important part of my life. I was usually there at least four days a week, sometimes more. Over the course of my time at the shelter I had many experiences that made the animal welfare problems in Athens really hit home. Some of the experiences that I'll share are not pleasant and may be hard for some people to handle.
FACING REALITY
"Where's Joe?" I asked when I came into the shelter one day. I was refering to the the tabby and white cat with the loud meow. "Did he get adopted?" No one would answer my question. After this situation was repeated several times, I finally learned to shut up. It was my first important lesson - don't ask questions when cats and even whole litters of kittens disappear overnight.
Shelter manager Marla Brooks-Verity would go to the shelter after hours to euthanize the cats. "I probably euthanized about 35 cats a month, and at least three times that number during kitten season," Marla said.
During spring, summer and fall (kitten season) every available cage was taken. The small shelter was busting at the seams, stuffed full of the unwanted and forgotten cats of Athens County. At one point we even housed kittens in the storage closet because of the lack of space. Every day, more cats would be dumped outside when no one was there. There were no cages outside, so people would just let cats loose, which contributed to a growing feral colony in the area around the shelter. I even remember arriving at the shelter and finding over 10 cats and kittens that had been dumped outside. Often, newborn kittens would be left in boxes by the front door with no mother in sight.With the shelter so full, sickness was common. There were several times when I found kittens dead in their cages - a result of illness or disease. Dead cats were carefully wrapped in plastic and placed in a large freezer until they could be picked up for disposal.
Marla served as the shelter manager for seven years. "Before we got the large freezer, we wouldn't have anywhere to put the bodies. Sometimes people took them outside and threw them in the dumpster. The whole place smelled like rotting cats," she said.
Shelter volunteers did everything they could to help out, but them number of animals was overwhelming to all. Adoptions were the one bright spot, though they were few and far between. Most people wanted small kittens, so adult cats were often overlooked. I found myself trying to not become attached to the adults because I never knew if they would be there the next day.CLOSING THE DOORS
In November 2005, the Athens County Humane Society cat shelter closed its doors. On paper, the shelter closed because the organization was forced off the property for legal reasons. However, several humane society board members had been lobbying to close the shelter for quite some time.
The shelter had become a place where no one wanted to be.
"I wanted the shelter to close," said Marla. "And it's good that it closed because it made us focus on prevention and spay and neuter."
With the building gone, the humane society began a foster care system for homeless animals and started efforts to provide more low-cost spay and neuter services to residents. They began scheduling a low-cost moblie clinic called RASCAL to come each month to perform spay and neuter surgeries.
After the shelter closed I could breathe easier. I didn't have to face the same devastation every day. But this doesn't mean that there aren't still problems. In fact, many Athens residents are upset that there is no shelter in the county.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Was closing the shelter a better option than killing most of the cats that went into it?
What would you do if you found a stray animal in Athens?
*Above photos by Amy Lauer
4 comments:
Amy,
Your experiences at the cat shelter provide such a reality check. What's sad is that the people who love these cats and want to protect them, are the same ones who have to kill them because of overpopulation. Athens appears to be one of the more serious cases in our county. Do you know if the overpopulation is due to inadequate resources/money to spay and neuter pets? Or is it because there are not enough people to adopt? (Perhaps it is both.)
I don't think closing the cat shelter helped the situation at all. The same number of cats/kittens could still be dying on a regular basis, if not more. With the cat shelter cats had a better chance and could find a home sometimes. It's sad that you had gone from being at Stay-A-While to here. I wonder why Athens couldn't create a facility more like that? I guess it all goes back to money.
I read the letter from the Athens resident, and she truly was going above and beyond what she had to do. To be honest, I am not sure if I would take the time and effort because it is discouraging to know how many more animals are out there like that. And to know what the end will be for that animal. We want to feel like we make a difference and let's face it, it's hard to feel like you can do that in a community like Athens.
I'm a cat person ("pookie," my albino Siamese, is the cutest thing ever), but my landlord doesn't allow pets. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case in most Athens rental properties. Do you think the shelter could have stayed open if people were allowed to have pets in their places (I know I would have adopted at least one cat)?
Wow… The stories really help me get an inside look at the shelter. To your questions, I think the shelter got so bad that the only thing you could do is close it. Sometimes things get so bad that there isn’t a way to fix them internally. Having said that, new attention given to the problems of the old shelter might produce positives, like the RASCAL program. Improvements like this might make opening a new shelter a possibility. A new, improved shelter would be the ideal.
As for a kitten, I would probably look for a good shelter. Although because of what you’ve pointed out, I’d probably take a closer look at the shelter before dropping the kitten off.
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