Mission Valley Animal Shelter: Cat Enrichment Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

The monies from the grant were used to purchase the following cat enrichment items:
Lossky automatic LED light interactive cat chase toy
Kastma electric yo-yo cat toy
Trixie 5-in-1 cat activity center
Catit 2.0 food tree
32" cat scratching post
Ito Rocky interactive cat food puzzle toy
Petsfit outdoor cat house
Petmaker kitty condo
33" corner cat furniture
Petmaker two-story cat condo
8' x 8' synthetic grass rug carpet
One Fast Cat exercise wheel
Laser pointer

Prior to receiving the grant, the two cat rooms, adult and kitten, were not particularly stimulating or enriching to the cats, especially the long-term residents. Their enrichment was provided by volunteer contact, which is important, but not enough. The new items have added much to the cat environment, and the cats are much happier and more content and active. Happy, active cats are much easier to show and get adopted more quickly. The enrichment has been especially important recently, since volunteers have not been allowed to come to the shelter due to COVID-19 restrictions so human interaction has been limited to shelter employees.

How many pets did this grant help?

This grant will help all of the cats taken in by the shelter, approximately 100 annually.

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Coltraine (first and second photos) benefited the most from the cat wheel. We posted a video of him in the Facebook post thanking the Petfinder Foundation. He was a very active cat and he loved that wheel. He has been adopted. The new cat cubbies were great as we have a few bigger cats such as 17-lb. Etta (third and fourth photos) who could not fit in the smaller ones we had, and two of the ones we ordered were specifically for larger cats. Etta has also been adopted.