A Sunday Afternoon at the Shelter

This summer I am volunteering at the Rainbow District Animal Shelter on Sunday and Wednesday afternoons.

What could be easier than helping to look after 30 cats, right?!

Wrong!

Here is a recount of my first Sunday – I was so exhausted by the end of it, I probably shouldn’t have driven home. You’ve heard of dog-tired? I was practically cat-unconscious!

My shift actually started an hour earlier, sort of. Stopped by Small Things to check on cat eyes and get Steve (our cat care and store help co-ordinator) to help me with putting cream into three of them. What a job!

Then to Lougheed’s to pick up a stray cat who looks identical to my Ruby Tuesday – a torti. Brought her to the shelter – she is a stray. Sure hope her owners call for her. But she looks pregnant, so I doubt they will. We called her Lilac Lougheed.

My first thought when I arrived at the shelter (and my van can drive itself there) is how much it costs to run a shelter. First of all, you’ve got four paid employees, minimum, on any one day. So there’s easily $100 per hour.

And then the cost of taxes, insurance and UTILITIES. The shelter is air conditioned – has to be climate controlled.

Add to that the cost of meds, food, litter, maintenance, vehicles, gas, more insurance. Gah!

My second thought was, will the phone ever stop ringing? And it HAS to be answered 24/7. This was a Sunday, a quiet day.

Hah!

Yes, it is their job to answer the phone – but how you stay pleasant for eight hours is beyond me.

My third thought was, will the dumped cats and surrendered dogs never end?! And I hadn’t even started my “job.”

My fourth realization was the volumes of paper almost every phone call seems to generate, and every surrender and stray, and every adoption (YAY!), and…and…and…

My job was/is (i) to make sure that all the cats and kittens are on the website, (ii) the information is accurate as can be when you know nothing about the cat since nine out of 10 times it has been dumped, (iii) help with meds, and (iv) flea and earmite patrol.

Simple, enough huh? Should take an hour! Especially since I’m not doing the cleaning and and refilling of the cats’ bowls – staff are doing that.

Hah! Hah!

Some of these cats are identical and they shred their info sheet. Cats get moved around during cleaning, which is daily. There are always new cats arriving. It is nothing new for five cats to arrive – would that be the kitten and nursing cat area, the owner surrendered area, or the stray cat area.

And sadly, there are cats that cannot be adopted. (Write me and tell me that every cat is adoptable and must be adopted and I’ll bring you a vanful on Wednesday.)

And remember, I am not even dealing with dogs. There are (during the week) dogs for grooming, and there are dogs for boarding, owner-surrendered dogs that may have issues (but may not), stray dogs that all seem to be large, high-energy, unneutered males.

Suffice it to say, I’ll eventually get it down to a system, but I’m more aware than ever of how hard it is to keep track. And by the end of the day, I’m sure my list was already outdated and I felt badly adding it to the stack of things to be followed up.

Eventually I hope to be able to bring in my portable and do some of the stuff myself.

I don’t think I was much help in making sure the info was accurate. Determining the age and weight of a cat? Hah! Hah! Hah! And, note to Jan, never ever remove the info sheet from a clip board in order to get a better copy.

Meds. Eye infections spread like the plague. I was diligent in washing my hands between cats. I don’t think I have much skin left. Eye drops are easier than cream but it’s still a two-person job. These kitties get l-lysiene added to their dry food – it’s an antiviral. What a great idea. Thank you Yannick! (Yannick will eventually go to study to be a Vet Tech.)

But there are still kitties that get sick. Really sick. And need to be on antibiotics for secondary infections. They lose their appetite and these kitties need to have canned food.

Get a cat who is depressed because she is at a shelter, so she stops eating and drinking, then she gets sick, then you have to “torture” this cat giving her meds.
(She is not being tortured, of course, but cats are terrible patients.) Very sad stuff, but so important to try.

Did I mention that the shelter is only paid to hold onto found cats or dogs for three days? Then it’s on the shelters’ own dime. And they cannot fundraise. They are no kill for dogs – I expect there are exceptions for dangerous dogs or terminally ill. But an open-admission shelter cannot be no kill for cats.

I would gladly bring detractors five cats a day to illustrate my point. Sudbury needs a spay neuter clinic AND we need an open admission shelter.

It’s heavy duty flea season out there, and you have to be hyper vigilant at a shelter. Miss treating a flea-laden cat (or dog) and your shelter life will be miserable. One poor new arrival was rippling with fleas. Rippling! Yannick and I treated him, head to tail. But he’ll need follow up. Thank heavens for med sheets, but kitties love tearing them up.

I left at four – back to the shop to try to give eye meds again. Then out to supper with my hubby and one of my daughters to celebrate her new job. (She’s had it for a few weeks. I’m just disorganized.) Came home and konked out – full of food and happy cat thoughts.

I hope I don’t sound negative about the shelter. I love the staff and the cats. Cat work is hard work but it’s wonderful when it ends in an adoption. AND WE HAD A KITTEN ADOPTION! Insert happy dance.

And we have kitties that will be going to Small Things when we get more adoptions.

Sunday Afternoons At The Shelter! Watch for the video. (Um, I don’t know how to do that yet, so don’t watch too closely!)

Jan Carrie Steven is a volunteer with Cat Adoption Trust Sudbury (CATS) and the co-ordinator of Small Things: Cats & Books. For more information, go to www.smallthings.ca.