Cat Adoption Team: Bissell Rescue U Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
Funds from the Rescue U renovation grant will help cover construction and related costs to update one of the rooms in our shelter, providing us with space that is far better utilized. We will be dividing our ringworm isolation room into two separate areas, as well as updating the kennel housing in both spaces. This construction project is part of a larger renovation in progress, and the isolation room changes are not yet complete. Currently, we are working with a contractor and architect toward completion and expect this construction to be finished in the next couple of months.
As the needs for the cats in our community evolve over time (due to success in reducing county-shelter intake rates and increasing live-release rates), we need more flexibility in our physical space to be able to increase the number of lives we can save and to provide the highest quality of care that we can. This grant is helping us re-purpose space we already have to better meet the needs of the thousands of cats and kittens who are transferred to our shelter for adoption each year, as well as improving housing for those felines who require isolation space for ringworm treatment. Without this project, we would have to continue housing a small number of ringworm cats in a large, under-utilized room while the number of cats we take in is limited by space in a small intake area. The new flex space, with improved housing, will allow us to expand our transfer program to save more lives, and provide healthier, more comfortable space for these new cats and cats in ringworm isolation.
How many pets did this grant help?
This grant will improve the lives of the thousands of cats and kittens who come into us for adoption each year, and we anticipate saving another 200 lives annually with the increased intake space.
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
Peaches (first photo) is a 5-month-old kitten whose beautiful fluffy coat and bright blue eyes are striking; combine that with his playful, sweet nature and you’ve got an all-around great little kitty. With high hopes for more opportunities for adoption, Peaches made the trip from the Humane Society for Tacoma & Pierce County to the Cat Adoption Team in Sherwood, OR. But instead of heading onto the adoption floor, his intake exam showed a single flaw: Peaches has ringworm. Luckily, CAT has a ringworm isolation ward where he is being treated and, once healed, he’ll be moved to an adoption area and find a loving home. Ringworm can have a long treatment time, which makes excellent housing that much more important. In order to save more lives like Peaches’, CAT needed an expanded intake area and better housing in its intake and ringworm areas. With the help of the Bissell Rescue U renovation grant, cats and kittens like Peaches will have improved housing (larger kennels — some twice the size of current kennels!) as soon as they come into the shelter — even if they need to be kenneled in a medical isolation ward.
Regis (second photo), a senior Persian mix, has got spunk that defies his age. An otherwise healthy ol’ guy, Regis transferred to the Cat Adoption Team from a local county shelter so that he could be treated for a ringworm infection. Today, he’s safely receiving treatment and as soon as he’s healed, he’ll be ready for adoption. Thanks to funds from the Bissell Rescue U renovation grant, kittens and cats like Regis will have an even better experience when they come into CAT. Grant funds are supporting a construction project that will increase CAT’s intake space, allowing the shelter to save another 200 lives a year. What’s more, those newly arrived cats, and any cats in ringworm isolation kennels, will have bigger, better housing that gives them more comfort and more room to heal.
