Wanted: Good home for cat rescue group
Volunteers keeping felines at home while they search for work space
Cats upstairs. Cats in the basement.
Cats recovering from surgery. Cats being socialized so they can hopefully be adopted out.
Close to 30 cats and kittens in total, all inside the home of one of the members of Niagara Falls Community Cats. Some are in cages, others in rooms designed to keep cats comfortable.
And there are at least 30 more cats, divided up and living at the homes of six other volunteers.
“They’ve each got one litter,” said group president Pam Brown.
“But this is Grand Central Station.”
Since losing their two rooms at a local church 18 months ago, Niagara Falls Community Cats has been looking for space — donated, if possible — to call home to care for all the cats it looks after.
The group is small, with no more than a dozen volunteer members. Formed three years ago, their aim is to catch stray cats, spay or neuter them, then release or adopt them out.
It’s a big, expensive, time consuming job. Not only do volunteers help with trapping, they also clean cages and litter boxes, feed the cats and give them care to feel comfortable around people.
And until they can find space to work from, they’ll have to keep the cats at home with them.
Last week, Niagara Falls city council offered $5,000 to help them through the end of the year. The city will also advertise on its social media sites looking for space for the group.
“This is a serious problem,” said Coun. Wayne Thomson. “It’s our responsibility. It’s our problem.”
Over three years, the group has handled more than 500 cats and kittens, getting them fixed at low-cost spay and neuter programs through Lincoln County Humane Society and Welland and District Humane Society.
The group will trap the cats themselves or lend traps to people with cats running loose in their neighbourhood. They’ll show them how to set the traps, and how to get cats comfortable
enough to step inside for food.
Ones that are caught, or turned in, are kept at one of the volunteers’ houses to be treated for fleas, checked to see if they need to be socialized, then taken for surgery.
There’s a recovery room set up inside the main house for post-op cats.
Feral cats can be released back into the community, while some of the Niagara animal control agencies plus Pet Valu stores in Thorold and at Glendale Plaza in St. Catharines help find homes for the others.
But the cats come in faster than they go out, and there are times Niagara Falls Community Cats has to turn them away.
The problem, she said, is “irresponsible pet ownership.”
“You have a pet that you do not spay or neuter, and that’s where the problem starts.
“You let it roam, it gets pregnant, comes home. Maybe has kittens in the house. When the kittens are old enough, you give them to your friends, who again don’t get them spayed or neutered.
“It’s a vicious cycle. We want to stop the cycle.”
They receive some donations through their Facebook page (search for Niagara Falls Community Cats) and receive food donations, too, which are stored in a sort of feline food bank at one of the houses.
HOCO Ltd. gave them a $5,000 donation, but already this year vet bills have cost $10,000, even at discounted rates. Hungry cats require a steady supply of kitty litter, too.
The group does charge an adoption fee when cats go out, but only to help cover the medical and food bills.
“This is why we need space. For these kinds of cats,” said Brown, reaching into a cage holding a shy, but not feral, cat.
“It would be so unfair to put him back out on the street, because he could be adopted if given time. And space. I don’t have the space to socialize him, but I’m going to have to.”
What they’re looking for is a minimum 300 square feet, “and we don’t want it in a public place. Not a storefront or anything like that,” Brown said, adding members might be able to contribute $300 toward rent.
“We’re behind the scenes, all we want is a place where we can continue doing what we’re doing. We have no plans to open an adoption centre.”
To contact the group, either go through its Facebook page or email nfcommunitycats@gmail.com.