It’s Animal Shelter and Rescue Appreciation Week, and that means it’s time to thank the hardworking people who save so many animal lives and make adoptions possible.

Shelter cat. Photo credit: flickr creative commons, toomanytuxedos

According to the ASPCA, approximately 1.6 million shelter cats are adopted every year from shelters around the U.S. What would we do with that many more cats on the streets?

There are lots of ways you can help your local animal shelter or rescue.

Volunteer

Animal rescue isn’t a profitable business. It is expensive and time consuming, so it relies a lot on dedicated volunteers. You could be one of them! You already know how to scoop a litterbox, so you have skills they need.

Your local rescue probably needs foster homes for cats. If you don’t have room in your home for fosters, maybe you have time to help out at an adoption center or helping staff adoption events.

If you can’t do that, there are ways your local shelter may need help that doesn’t need direct contact with animals, like helping with data entry or social media.

Collect Donations

What does your local cat rescue need? If you ask them or check their Amazon wish list, you might be surprised it’s a lot more than cat food and litter!

Many rescues need donations of paper towels, bleach, and other cleaning supplies to keep their facilities clean. They may also need office supplies to generate the paperwork necessary for adoption contracts or hand sanitizer to help keep potential adopters from accidentally spreading germs between the cats up for adoption.

Before you get rid of those old towels, ask your local rescue organization if they want them. They may not match your new shower curtain, but homeless cats won’t care about that.

Towels. Photo credit: flickr creative commons, mikecogh

Of course, there’s nothing like donating money to your rescue organization. It helps pay for veterinary costs and for supplies needed to keep caring for cats until they find happy homes.

Adopt

If there is room in your family, one of the best things you can do for your local rescue organization is adopt a cat. That makes room in their care to rescue another cat in need.

Say Thanks

It doesn’t matter whether it’s this week or any week, be sure you thank the volunteers you meet who work in animal rescue. They give so much of their time and their hearts to helping cats.

Without volunteers in animal rescue, our family wouldn’t include Cupcake, Newton, or Pierre. So we thank everyone involved in animal rescue from the bottom of our hearts!

Share

email

Twitter

Facebook

Pinterest

Tumblr

Linkedin

Did you know that an estimated 70 million cats live outdoors, getting by the best they can? Some of these cats are homeless cats who have previously lived with humans and been lost or abandoned. But many others not socialized to humans and are afraid of them. Those cats are considered feral.

Feral cat. Photo credit: flickr creative commons/Quinn Dombrowski

How You Can Help Feral Cats

Since feral cats are afraid of humans, you can’t just pick them up and take them home with you. Their idea of family isn’t humans and a warm bed. Instead, they often live in groups of other feral cats called colonies.

You can help take care of your local feral cat colonies by making sure they have food and shelter. Feeding your community cats isn’t enough. It is important that you also get them neutered to prevent them having lots of kittens. With unaltered cats breeding in feral colonies, overpopulation can happen in a hurry.

Feral tuxedo cat. Photo credit: flickr creative commons/myri_bonnie

Since you can’t pick up a feral cat for a trip to the vet for a neuter the way you would a cat in your home, you can use a trap to catch a feral cat, then visit the vet for the cat’s neuter and vaccinations. Afterward, you return the kitty to the colony where she can live out her life without continuing to reproduce. This process is known as trap/neuter/vaccinate/return, or TNVR (sometimes shortened to TNR).

Cats who go through the TNVR process are usually identified by clipping the top of one ear while they are having their surgery. This allows you to tell a cat is already neutered without having to approach too closely.

Feral black cat. Photo credit: flickr creative commons/fauxto_digit

Many communities have groups that can help teach you to use a humane trap. You can search for one in your community in one handy place. Some of them even organize affordable spay and neuter surgeries for feral cats going through the TNVR process. If there isn’t a local group in your community, you can look to the national  Alley Cat Allies organization for guidance.

Other Ways to Help Feral Cats

You may not have a feral colony near you needing a caretaker, so you might wonder what else you can do.

Feral cat. Photo credit: flickr creative commons/charlenesimmons

Here are some ideas:

• Spay and neuter your own cats so you don’t accidentally contribute to the feral cat population in your area.
• Contact your local organization that supports feral cat caretakers and see if they need help. Local organizations may need people to:
  • Make followup phone calls
  • Do clerical work
  • Walk through the local animal shelter to identify feral cats so they can be returned to their colonies
  • Build shelters for feral cat colonies, especially in cold climates
• Spread the word that feral cats are part of our community, and these cats deserve our care and concern.

Orange feral cat. Photo credit: flickr creative commons/charlenesimmons

Share

email

Twitter

Facebook

Pinterest

Tumblr

Linkedin

I am seeing a lot more posts on social media about pet microchips causing cancer, and it’s not supported by the facts. Since information circulating on social media can cause people to make decisions about whether or not to chip their pets, I wanted to take a look at the current science about it.

What is a Pet Microchip?

A pet microchip is a small object about the size of a grain of rice that is injected under a pet’s skin between the shoulder blades. Each chip is encoded with a unique number, and when a microchip scanner is passed near the pet, the chip emits a radio wave with the that identifying number. The scanner then displays the unique number of the chip, uniquely identifying the pet.

Databases of microchips are maintained by the manufacturers, and consumers submit their contact information to the database so that there is contact information corresponding to the unique chip ID number. When a veterinarian or shelter scans a cat and needs to find the owner, they can contact the manufacturer or use a universal microchip lookup tool that can search multiple manufacturer databases at once. This makes it possible to access the contact information associated with the unique ID in the chip and contact the pet’s family.

Do Microchips Cause Cancer in Cats and Dogs?

In the United Kingdom,the British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA) has been tracking microchip adverse reactions since 1996. This gives long-term, real-life data about actual adverse reactions to implanted microchips in pets.

The most common adverse reaction reported to microchips is migration, when the chip does not remain behind the cat’s neck and between his shoulder blades. This happened to Pierre. His chip is located over the middle of his left shoulder blade. The risk of a migrated microchip is that it may not register if someone runs the scanner down the cat’s back if it migrates far enough. It isn’t a health risk.

The BSAVA reported 2 tumors at the microchip site in 3.7 million microchipped pets. In one of these cases, veterinarians are unsure whether the tumor was from a vaccination that was given at the same location.

Why Microchip your Cat?

On the other hand, the American Humane Association estimates that over 10 million dogs and cats are lost or stolen in the US every year. The return-to-owner rate is SO much higher in pets with chips, especially for cats.

Cats are 20 times more likely to get home from a shelter if they have a chip. Dogs, in general, have a better return-to-owner rate even without chips, in part because people are not as proactive about finding lost cats. But even dogs 2.5 times more likely to get home from a shelter with the help of a microchip.

Ultimately, you have to decide what’s best for your cat. Every choice you make balances risks and rewards for your pets, from microchipping to what diet you choose for your furry companion. I am an advocate of microchips for identification because the chance of a cat being lost is much higher than 2 in 3.7 million, and I see a lot of heartbreak every week from people searching for their lost cats.

Research and further reading:

AVMA, Microchipping of Animals Backgrounder
Animals Journal, Frequency of Lost Dogs and Cats in the United States and the Methods Used to Locate Them
Ohio State University Research News, Microchips Result in High Rate of Return of Shelter Animals to Owners
American Animal Hospital Association, AAHA Universal Pet Microchip Lookup

Photo credits:

depositphotos/RasulovS and vetkit
flickr creative commons/Quinn Dombrowski

Share

email

Twitter

Facebook

Pinterest

Tumblr

Linkedin