Paws Animal Shelter: Cat Enrichment Grant Report

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

The $199 cat enrichment grant was used to purchase a cat exercise wheel for the cats in our shelter. We had one wheel already, which multiple cats enjoyed using. As we have cats in several rooms, we wanted to purchase a second wheel for our cats.

This grant enabled us to buy a second cat exercise wheel to help reduce boredom in our resident cats. Kittens are easy to entertain in a shelter, but cats who have been here for several months can become very bored, and this exercise wheel gives them a distraction that also provides needed exercise (shelter cats also gain weight very easily!). We truly appreciate this grant from the Petfinder Foundation. Thank you also for the article that you provided to us. We submitted this to our local newspaper, the Urbana Daily Citizen, and they published it for us (it's one of the attachments below).

How many pets did this grant help?

There are currently eight cats in the adolescent cat room. We moved the old exercise wheel into the older-cats room, and there are usually 18-20 cats in there.

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

Boredom is an issue with cats in shelters, and the new wheel has been placed in our “adolescent” room (i.e. last year’s kittens). Pip (first photo) and Sparrow, in particular, enjoy using this wheel. I decided to take videos for this report on Saturday; I went into the adolescent room a few times, and each time Pip got on the wheel. Sparrow had surgery recently, so she is being fostered right now and I wasn’t able to get any video of her using it. However, when she returns to the shelter, exercise is going to be very important for her (she had surgery on her knees), so this wheel will be crucial in keeping her active and stretching her joints. You can see video of Pip on the wheel in her Petfinder profile: www.petfinder.com/petdetail/40973355
Meet Sparrow: www.petfinder.com/petdetail/41844412