| Actually, I goofed. He is at the Southboro shelter which is affiliated
with the Framingham one. Yes, this is a no-kill shelter except
in extreme situations where the animal is very sick with no recovery
expected, or so feral that he or she could never be tamed and placed.
This is what I was told by the woman who helped me catch Nikki.
As I understood it, these women are all volunteers who deal mostly
with capturing and caring for stray cats. I will find out more
information at the meeting tomorrow night.
/Roberta
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| I can speak for the Framingham Humane Society as I am
volunteer for them and also was their fundraising
chairperson a few years back.
Framingham is basically a no-kill shelter. The volunteers work
very hard to save a cat - any cat - if it can be saved.
We run up huge vet bills doing this - even considering that
the vet donates all of her time - but we do have to pay for
medicines (even at 1/2 cost). When a cat comes into the shelter
needing SPECIAL attention, but does not need to stay at the
vets, we have a number of foster homes - I am one of them. These
volunteers work with the cats - giving them medication, attention,
and a quiet surrounding. Many expectant mothers are placed in
foster homes to give birth and to stay until they are ready to
go to the shelter for adoption. Last year I was a foster home to
about a dozen cats at different times and for different reasons.
We will put a cat down if it is a stray and has leukemia. But even
in these cases - our process is that if it has a positive test in the
office, we will re-test and send it to N.J. for confirmation. Then
if it still comes back positive, we will put it to sleep. We do
not have the facilities to keep it separated from the other cats.
We have worked with 100's of feral cats, each day volunteers talk
to them, attempt to pet them, and win their trust. Usually over
a period of time - sometimes months - they can be tamed. Sometimes
they never turn around and then, if and only if there seems to
be no change (and this is over many, many months) we decide the
cat may never be adoptable and rather than keep it caged for the
rest of its life - which could be years, we will put it to sleep.
Sometimes a cat comes in so badly injured that it cannot be saved.
Some of these injuries are cruelty cases, some simply sad accidents.
We always - ALWAYS - request the vet's opinion and follow her advice.
An example of how hard we all work to save these animals - over
Thanksgiving vacation, we had eight cats in the vets due to a virus.
And they were all in there for about 2 weeks. The F.A.H.S. always
has cats there for some reason. Our vet, by the way, is Dr. Nord,
with the Fram. Animal Hospital.
Once in a very great while we are so overrun with cats/kittens and
when some calls in saying they have cats or kittens and they
don't want them, and then IF we cannot take them due to over-crowded
shelter or foster homes, we will tell that person that if they
want to bring it down to the vets to be euthanized, we will pay
the fee. We don't like saying that, but have to only in extreme
cases. Usually, we can find someone to take them temporarily. We
have to say that because what we have found is that many times
if no one takes the cat - the owner lets it loose and it suffers
a worse fate.
Framingham A.H.S. does not have its own shelter - we have to rent
space from a private kennel in Southboro. We want very much
to have our own place in Framingham, and will be petitioning
the town government to help us acquire land.
Our shelter is strictly run by volunteers - and as Roberta can
attest - by VERY DEDICATED VOLUNTEERS. All our finances come
from either fundraising affairs, membership fees, contributions,
and matching funds.
I didn't mean to go on at such length about the F.A.H.S. but I
am proud of its work. Our cats are in large cages - a person can
walk into them - but when we are crowded, they sometimes have to
go into small cages. Every walk-in cage has a window, and every
day - each and every cat is allowed to get out and walk around
outside its cage. Also we have volunteers whose responsibility it
is to just "pet" them. And that happens every day. All cats
get human contact every day. We believe that is why they seem
so content.
Pat Daley
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| Thanks, Pat, for coming to my rescue with information. In fact,
you answered many of the questions I was going to raise tomorrow
evening.
Can't wait to visit Nikki at the shelter. He is going to be one
spoiled cat!!
/Roberta
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