No-Kill Shelters

Does your community of shelters that institute a no kill policy? One that will not put down animals just because a lack of space in the shelter. It's always a nice to see that more shelters are going towards this policy. Before it was such a problem of people dropping their pets off and the older pets become the next in line to be put down.

True we do have a problem with the vast amount of strays but there are other means to control the population than to just kill everything. We have a program that is similar to a catch and release for the stray cat problem here. They catch as many stray cats as they can during the year and perform spays or neutering on them before releasing them back out in the wild.

Catch and release with stray cats. That just sounds weird. But it is a good idea. It's a tough problem. We have a whole breeding population of feral cats around here, spread out over a few square miles. Quite well integrated. I have no idea what to do about it.

The shelter is not the problem. They just can't accept more and more animals without more space. That is a fact. What are they supposed to do when there is no space and more animals are coming in?

There are more people ditching pets than those who willing to adopt pets.
Either someone can provide more free space for them, or some kind of law should be in place to prevent further ditching of pets.

It is the first time I heard of catching and releasing strayed cats. It only solves half the problem. So the feral cats will not reproduce. It does not fix the problem of people abandon their pets to have them on their own.

It's called Trap/Neuter/Return (T/N/R). The program in the US came from a few cat volunteers in Washington DC Who got tired of seeing perfectly healthy cats who were simply unsocialised being rounded up and killed only to have more cats move in and take their place. They formed an organization called Allet Cat Alies. http://www.aleycat.org They have put together statistics and studies that show that TNR is much more efficient and effective than catch-and-kill. Their mission is education, and helping other sites institution TNR. Stray or abandoned cats are comfortable with people and can be taken off the street and found new homes. Feral cats were never socialized to people when they were young, or they have been on the streets so long that they have reverted to the wild. They will never make good pets and would be miserable living indoors. They are live-trapped, fixed, vaccinated, and the tip of the left ear is cut off as a visible sign that this is a fixed feral. If you can get at least 70% of the colony fixed, then the die-off rate will exceed the birth rate and the population will gradually go down, meanwhile being place holders to keep more cats from moving in. It's cheaper, more effective, and more humane.

Wow, most of the shetlers in New Zealand are forced to put down animals. Although I guess they could refuse to take in more animals until some are adopted. However this would probably cost the lives of the animals that aren't admitted into the shelter. It's a really difficult situation. I'm a big fan of people fostering animals to make room in the shelters. :-)

I've never heard of the T/N/R strategy and find it interesting and perhaps a good strategy a part from the fact I'd rather the cats were rehomed.

Alley Cat Allies has aa lot of good info on their website and many brochures and fliers you could order. They specialise in helping volunteers start TNR programs where they are. Thanks to the internet, they could probably assist and encourage if you wanted to start a TNR program where you live. The biggest hurdles are finding a veterinarian willing to give you a deep discount on s/n, and getting your local officials on board. They have plenty of studies and statistics on the success of TNR projects in major US cities that you can shsor your local authorities.

TNR is only for feral cats. The strays and unwanted kittens that are filling up the shelters, that's something else. Thats where you need agressive s/n education, and low cost s/n clinics.

Our shelter does have a no kill policy. What they do is work with local rescue groups that foster pets then adopt them out. Not all the shelters in my state are no kill, though. Some get funding from the state and because of budget cuts may be forced to cut the time they hold dogs and cats before euthanizing them.

(06-12-2012, 01:17 PM)TreeClimber Wrote: Our shelter does have a no kill policy. What they do is work with local rescue groups that foster pets then adopt them out. Not all the shelters in my state are no kill, though. Some get funding from the state and because of budget cuts may be forced to cut the time they hold dogs and cats before euthanizing them.

Oh wow and here I was thinking I was unique in wanting shelters to foster out more pets to make room so that no animals would have to be turned away or put down. It's lovely to hear that your local shelter has a no kill policy and works with local rescue groups to foster pets out.

There's many no-kill shelters in the area I live in. We got our DSH from a no kill shelter that had a bunch of their kittens being housed at a Pet Smart store. They had a far more thorough adoption process and stricter rules for owning one of their strays than either breeder of my purebred cats put us through! But it's good that these people cared so much about their cats and wanted them to go to homes they'll be very happy in.

(05-23-2012, 06:19 AM)The CatDog Wrote: Does your community of shelters that institute a no kill policy? One that will not put down animals just because a lack of space in the shelter. It's always a nice to see that more shelters are going towards this policy. Before it was such a problem of people dropping their pets off and the older pets become the next in line to be put down.

True we do have a problem with the vast amount of strays but there are other means to control the population than to just kill everything. We have a program that is similar to a catch and release for the stray cat problem here. They catch as many stray cats as they can during the year and perform spays or neutering on them before releasing them back out in the wild.

I have heard of this type of catch and release idea for the stray cat population, and I think that it is a great idea. Stray cats are feral and, if they are older than a few months, they typically don't adjust well to house life. That is especially true if their new owners decide to keep them indoors (which is safer).

That is why I like the stray cat release program. If stray cats are collected, neutered, and given certain vaccinations, it they will stop multiplying and can be kept under control. Obviously though, to seriously make an effect on a certain area's feral cat population, a lot of funding and effort is needed.

I just started working at an animal shelter a few weeks ago. They have a no-kill policy when it comes to adoptable animals, but they do put animals down due to health and temperament issues. Unfortunately, the city the shelter is in forces them to put down feral cats. They don't allow TNR, even though some of the shelter staff have been trying to get them to change their minds for quite awhile (or so they told me), so my heart breaks a little every time I see animal control bringing in a feral cat.

Space is definitely a problem, though. We are completely at capacity for large dogs, and apparently, they had to turn a dog away the other day (I was off that day, so I can honestly say "it wasn't me!"). The woman who brought the dog in went psycho on the shelter's facebook page because of it. :/ It's sad to turn an animal away, but if there's no room, there's no room.

Yes, well for cats. Not sure about dogs. Though I was a little mortified when I found out how they dispose of the ones that die naturally, but I guess it makes sense - they freeze them and creamate them in groups.

My town recently got a shelter, and it's no-kill. It makes me really happy, since I know my veterinarian is working there. I'm getting more and more respect for that man every time I hear about him. As far as I know, they don't use TNR in our town, but I think that all the shelter animals get sterilized. I know that they use TNR in our largest cities on stray cats and dogs, since they have a huge problem with them. I think that all shelters should be no-kill, there's really no point in killing one set of animals nobody wanted to adopt just to bring in another one...

There are no-kill shelters where I live, but the problem is that sometimes they have to turn away animals when they have no more space to accommodate them. This has happened a lot in recent years. Due to the economic climate, many people have decided to get rid of their pets, and fewer people are prepared to take on a rescue animal. No-kill shelters want to help all unwanted animals, and once an animal is in their care, they have to keep it until it is rehomed, but in the meantime more animals arrive needing help.

The shelter in my current city (Baton Rouge) is making the move to being a no-kill. The dogs are pretty difficult, but the cats not so much. There's a number of local cat rescues who will take in kitties approaching their kill-date. Four local pet stores also have display cases that once upon a time were used for puppy-mill puppies, they rent out the space at cost of care and everyone who comes into the store gets to see them. Every Saturday the rest of the cats come for adoption events at the pet stores and a large kiosk in the local shopping mall. It sucks that a government agency has to rely on nonprofits to run efficiently, but it's working. They also practice trap-spay-release.

I was thinking about this post last week. We stopped at the home of a coworker of my husband's. This guy lives in the country and rents space. When we drove up there were about 12-15 cats, all of varying sizes/ages ...from kittens to full sized adults....on the porch. The man said they're all feral and he's been feeding them (and now, of course, they are his "friends"!) We spoke about the "catch and release" program I'd read about here. He said he called the local shelter to see about having the cats spayed and neutered...and they wanted a donation of $50 per cat. Whew! A person could never afford that, and you certainly couldn't do one or two at a time, because the others would just keep breeding. I'm not even sure of an answer here. I know shelters can't just do the neutering for free.

And of course I'm also wondering.....how many feral cats one area can hold before the animals die of from starvation, disease sets in, etc.

It's pretty sad in Malaysia where I grew up. There wasn't much funding for shelters right up to the late 90s and early 2000s. Dogs were often kept in cramped spaces in "shelters" that resembled small pounds and they were often euthanised when there wasn't enough space or resources to keep them. Recently, however thanks to support form local politicians, the number of no-kill shelters has increased significantly and aided by Buddhist and Christian organizations, several very modern and comfortable shelters for dogs and other animals were built in recent years.
These groups of animal-lovers had done a lot of good work collecting money for charity and holding charity events to promote their cause and to get the message across to the public, that animals deserve to be treated with dignity too.

The Cat and Dog shelters out here advertise a no-kill policy, but lets be honest, they also know that they would lose a lot of donations if the contributors thought they put animals down after a short time. Hopefully it is a policy that they stick to.
We also have a cat neutering programme worked on the same basis. Volunteers, community managers and the local vets work together. Adult cats are spayed and released back. If kittens are young enough and partly tame the shelters will sometimes take them on to re-home. Once spayed they generally become a normal house cat.

(07-01-2013, 04:28 AM)TheBrit Wrote: The Cat and Dog shelters out here advertise a no-kill policy, but lets be honest, they also know that they would lose a lot of donations if the contributors thought they put animals down after a short time. Hopefully it is a policy that they stick to.
We also have a cat neutering programme worked on the same basis. Volunteers, community managers and the local vets work together. Adult cats are spayed and released back. If kittens are young enough and partly tame the shelters will sometimes take them on to re-home. Once spayed they generally become a normal house cat.

I'm hopeful too! Neutering is another thing that community leaders could look into. The proliferation of stray cats and dogs in some countries is appalling, just a simple surgical procedure and a whole host of problems could be simply avoided. My family used to donate money to the local vets to neuter stray cats and dogs but we seemed to be the only ones doing it at that time.
I totally agree about the house cats.

Our shelter here also foster's out pets, although they are still short enough people to take all of the pets when they are over crowded. They periodically have fairs set up for adoption and the community events to help with supplies and signing people up to foster. We did adopt a dog from there, but we also have one that someone dropped off on the side of the road. I have not heard of the catch/release program but it sounds like a good idea for a place to start. People need to be more educated on the facts of what happens to these animals and the resources required to support them. I'm not saying it would fix things, but maybe if everyone who chose to own a pet was REQUIRED to have them spayed/neutered it would help.

San Francisco was recently awarded the title, Safest City in the United States to be a cat or dog. I volunteer in the shelter system here, so I can tell you some of how we're doing it.

First of all we are lucky to have an amazing community that supports the shelter system wholeheartedly. There are no pet stores where cats or dogs can be purchased. As a result of the community support we are able to fundraise quite successfully. We also have an animal care hospital that is connected to the shelter. It is like any other animal hospital, and it costs the same as going to any other vet, but its profits feed into the shelter system rather than into investors pockets.

We have a great feral cat program that I have gotten the chance to work with. We have dedicated volunteers who will go to your house and assist you in trapping feral cats. We then fix them, vet check them, rabies vaccinate them and return them. Without them reproducing these populations go down rather quickly. Feral cats generally have a lifespan of about 6-8 years. We also allow members of the community to borrow traps, and they can bring any cats they catch into our spay/neuter days, which we hold three times a week. These clinics are free for cats from San Francisco, and discounted for cats from other places. We notch the cats ear both to protect them as a recognized member of a controlled cat colony, and to save them the stress of being recaptured.

The second prong of our plan is helping people who are trying to be responsible pet guardians but who may lack the funds. We offer shot clinics in neighborhoods where pet numbers are high and funds are low. At these shot clinics we often hand out vouchers for free spay/neuter to pet owners in need. At our pet hospital people are able to work with the staff to create payment plans in order to save their pets so that they can avoid putting a pet into the shelter system because it becomes ill or is injured.

We also offer classes in responsible pet guardianship, both for children and adults. If you take one of our puppy classes we will discount your adoption fee by 50%.

The number of animals in San Francisco entering the shelter system is now half of what it had been previously. We are now at the point where we are able to help nearby cities that are still struggling by taking in some of their cats and dogs. I'm proud to be one of the many volunteers who help keep this system going.

I'm real familiar with the practices of the shelters here in Sacramento but I know for a fact that in Los Angeles they don't think twice to put a pet to sleep. It's awful. I'm glad I don't live there anymore.

Since I have only been living here for the past four years, I am still getting familiar with what the practices are. I have a friend who works with a program called C.A.T.S., Cats About Town Society. They take in cats to their homes during the week and on the weekends bring them to the society for adoption. If a cat doesn't get adopted, they choose who they go home with again until the following week. This process is repeated on a regular basis until the cats are all adopted. It takes a while for some of them because they are older cats and most adopters want kittens. I have volunteered there a couple of times with my friend and you get to see how wonderful these cats are.

However, I now own a Dachshund. She's a mid-size, not a full grown long one.

I recently read news about a major overhaul in Mississippi that over 100 dogs and cats were rescued and it nearly broke my heart. I want to get more active and protect every animal out there.