A star is saved
NEW COMMUNITY CAT PROGRAM BRIGHTENS THE FUTURE FOR CATS IN SOUTH TEXAS
Star is the light of her person’s life. The snowy-white cat has lived with Mayra for 15 years at her Texas home. But one day, someone in the neighborhood saw Star outside, picked her up and brought her to the nearest shelter. Not only was it probably a scary experience for sweet Star, being in the shelter could have meant the end of her happy life. Star was lucky, though, because a new program at the shelter prevented that from happening.
The shelter is Palm Valley Animal Society (PVAS) in Edinburg, Texas, and the program is a recently launched community cat program. Best Friends has been working alongside shelter staff to help transform
PVAS from one of the most under-resourced shelters in the country into a place that saves lives. And saving more cats has been a priority. Not long ago, the shelter was taking in more than 10,000 cats a year — and only saving about 19% of them. The community cat program is already turning that around, and Star was among the first of many cats who will be saved because of it.
Good community cat programs not only perform trap-neuter-return (TNR) in areas where there are reports of free-roaming cats, they give a way out to felines who end up at the shelter as strays. As long as the cats are healthy, they’re spayed or neutered, vaccinated, treated for fleas and returned to the spots where they were originally found. That’s what happened to Star. Two days after she landed at PVAS, community cat coordinator Sarah Kowalski drove her back to the address where she was picked up.
Mayra saw the van pull up, and she burst into tears when Sarah handed Star to her. Since learning about the community cat program at PVAS, Mayra has been bringing free-roaming cats to the shelter for spaying or neutering. As of last November, the save rate for cats at PVAS was already up to 81%, which is pretty much the reverse of what was happening before. Now that’s a staff, a program and a community with star quality.
Not long ago, the shelter was taking in more than 10,000 cats a year — and only saving about 19% of them.
Follow Palm Valley Animal Society’s progress: pvactx.org