www.houltonanimalshelter.com
Spring is upon us — honest it is — you can see it in the extra daylight hours, the strength of the sun, the melting snow. I know we all joke that we’ll be sliding down a snow bank into the pond or lake to take a swim in July, and hopefully that is all it is, just a joke, but spring is here. With spring comes the time of year the Houlton Humane Society dreads – kitten season. Every year the shelter is inundated with calls about abandoned kittens under this bridge, behind that business, boxes of kittens in parking lots. So first and foremost I want to beg you, please do not abandon animals if you cannot keep them. There are so many other alternatives than just leaving poor defenseless animals to fend for themselves, become wild, sick, and then reproducing to exacerbate the problem.
If you have cats, please have them spayed and neutered. If you cannot afford this, please call the Shelter at 532-2862. There are many programs available that can help you with this. The State has a financial aid program – it is often out of money but we need to keep putting names in so the State can recognize the enormous need and look for other sources of revenue. The Shelter has a no-interest loan program. If we can identify a specific need, in terms of numbers of people seeking financial assistance, we can apply for grants. We are working on a huge spay/neuter clinic program that we can put you on the list for. There are really many ways that we can try to help, but we can only do that if you come forward.
If your cat has kittens and you can’t keep them, there are so many ways you can find homes, without having to resort to abandonment. You can advertise for free in the many buy-swap-or sell publications, you can take out an ad in the paper, you can call me and I’ll put them in Pet Talk, you can call the shelter and they will pass the information along to potential adopters, you can put signs up at the local grocery store, or anywhere else with a bulletin board. You can network with your friends, neighbors and co-workers. You can check with your Vet to see if he or she would allow you to put up a note in their office.
If you see a cat wandering in your yard, please don’t just assume it’s a stray. Every single cat in our shelter belonged to someone at one time and for some reason when a cat goes missing, people never think to call and ask if it’s been brought to the Shelter, they just assume it went to live with someone else, or got hit by a car, or eaten by a fox. I have a beautiful orange cat that visits my house regularly. If I put food out for it, I’m sure she would keep coming back day after day. Heck, if somebody left a steak for me at a designated spot every day, I’d come back too! But I don’t automatically assume this cat has no home and pick her up and take her to the Shelter. She appears healthy, well fed, and I’m sure she’s a neighbor cat, just coming to check out the birds and squirrels in my back yard.
Obviously if you have a cat that has wandered into your yard and is staying and you’re not feeding it, if it’s thin or sickly, then the first thing you do is call animal control – don’t feed the animal, let the professional do his job. And then animal control should be canvassing the neighborhood to see if he can find the owner before he brings the cat (or dog) to the Shelter.
Only as a last resort should these animals be brought to the Shelter – if they need medical treatment, if they appear neglected, malnourished, ill, or in danger in some way, of course we want you to act to protect the animal. But not every cat that wanders by your house is a stray, and sometimes doing nothing and just watching and waiting is the best thing to do.
Cats are free-roamers, they don’t stay in their owners yards, and I can’t tell you how many times we have gotten in a great big fat healthy neutered male cat that someone brought in that really was just out for a daily stroll.
