www.houltonanimalshelter.com
Every spring, animal shelters across the country are challenged by the large numbers of stray and abandoned animals that come through the doors. Houlton is no exception. The other day I was having a conversation with a volunteer who asked how many animals we adopt out in a week. A lot depends on the weather, school schedules, and so many things. Right now things are slow because the last few weeks of school are so busy with proms and graduation and class trips that many families aren’t focused on getting a new kitty or a new dog, but still, we might adopt out anywhere from 5 to 10 animals in a slow week.
The volunteer was impressed by this until I told her that just last week, three cats came in for every cat adopted out. That’s what’s so sad.
Last week we received three beautiful cats from Sherman, an absolutely gorgeous long haired orange male, a beautiful muted long haired tortie who is likely spayed, and a marmalade spayed male. These were obviously someone’s cats who were either left behind when they moved, or given up to someone and subsequently strayed away from home. They are so loving, you pick them up and they just purr and purr and purr and rub all over you.
And on it goes, it’s the same story from day to day, week to week. This past weekend we fostered out a kitty who will likely be adopted and took a pre-adopt on another kitty that will go home this week. Two out of 180.
The volunteer said to me “well, you’re doing the best you can do” and I’m thinking, “No we’re not.” If we had more volunteers, we could do off-premises adoptions, we could send the Shelter van to different towns and have adopt-a-thons. If we had more money we could advertise more. I would be willing to bet if we could afford a full page full color ad in the Pioneer, we could show you at least 30 of our cats and you would have a chance to find Fluffy who wandered off, or find a new companion to offer a home to.
If we had more volunteers, we’d have someone who could take photos and post them on posters in all the surrounding towns, we’d have our website and the petfinder.com site more up to date.
If we had more staff we could be making phone calls when strays come in, canvassing the neighborhood where they were found, to see if we could find the owners.
So no, we are not doing everything that can be done, we are just doing everything that we can do given our limited resources. That’s where you can come in. If you have just one free day a week and would like to help in some way, whether it’s photography, fund raising, adopt-a-thons, anything at all, you can make all the difference in the world to a homeless animal.
If you have a pet that you can’t keep for some reason, please understand that the Shelter is full right now, so you’ll need to work hard to find homes for your own pets. You can network with neighbors, put posters up at grocery stores; put an ad in the paper, etc.
If you are looking to find a home for your pet, still call the Shelter at 532-2862 and they will take down the information and if someone comes to the Shelter looking for a specific breed or size of animal and we don’t happen to have one, we do keep a list of pets needing homes and we do pass that along and can help in that way.
Right now we have a gentleman looking for a medium sized dog that will get along with his other animals and his children so if you have such a dog that needs placement, call the shelter and give them your information and we’ll pass it along.
I have never seen so many animals at our shelter at one time as what we have now, this is a serious crisis and we need your help to find a perfect home for every single one of these animals.
