Pet Talk

by Cathy Davis
www.houltonanimalshelter.com
    It’s budget time once again – the towns are taking a hard look at the increases they are going to be expecting this coming year and all of us are tightening our belts, trying to find a little extra here or there to put toward the fuel oil bill. Many of us have purchased pellet stoves, we’re keeping the thermostat on 60 instead of 70, and we are getting ready to put on sweaters and slippers instead of cranking up the heat. We know there is a long hard winter ahead of us all, financially.
    When the animal shelter looks at our budget, there is no fat to trim. We have never spent any extra money on frills. Our Vet bills are paid by the adoption fees and when we are fortunate to have someone make a donation to offset those fees, we are then able to adopt to seniors and others with limited means and waive those fees.
    Our oil bill is going to be a killer, but we do feel good knowing that we constructed an extremely energy efficient building so even though we have a lot of square footage, we also have a foot thick wall of Styrofoam insulation and cement to help keep the staff and the animals comfortable.
    We turn off lights in rooms that are not used, we send staff home when the work is done rather than keeping them around all day, and we just keep a skeleton crew on in the afternoon and Sundays.
    We use volunteers to help supplement the paid staff and we are so very fortunate to have dozens of people who come help clean, walk dogs, mow the lawns, and do various maintenance chores.
    We use the minimum amount of cat litter for each box, we scoop when possible, we purchase cleaning supplies in bulk at low rates, and we get most of our pet food free.
    There is nothing we can do to cut our costs, yet we find our budget increasing year after year as more and more people utilize the services of the shelter for various reasons. The family who just had a brand new baby and the baby is allergic, races to the shelter asking us to take their cats. The family who is moving to a new apartment, discovers they can’t take their animals with them and turn to us for help. The bereaved family who has just lost their mother, has no idea what to do with Mom’s three aging and sickly cats, and the Shelter steps in to help.
    Not to mention the hundreds, literally hundreds of plain stray, lost, abandoned, abused and neglected animals that come to us from animal control.
    If you can help, please mail your donation to P.O. Box 548, Houlton or you can go onto the shelter’s Web site and make a donation via Pay Pal.  Please help. Thank you.