Animal Coalition of Delaware County: COVID-19 Operation Grant Report

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

To help pay for rent at our storefront the "Cat Nook Café" in Norwood. The Cat Nook Café is an interactive foster home for cats from ACDC Rescue, Inc. We can house up to 12 cats together in our living room environment and the public can visit, join events, and rent the space for private use. When COVID 19 shut down businesses, the income for the Cat Nook Cafe dropped significantly as we were no longer open to the public to visit with the cats.

When COVID-19 hit the US and non-essential retail was shut down, all of the cats in our adoption centers in local pet stores were forced back in to foster care. Our already full foster homes needed to find space for 12 cats ASAP. By allowing us to keep the cat cafe open, we could house cats that are ready for adoption and free up space in our foster homes for animals with more specialized needs. All the café cats were spayed or neutered, healthy, and ready for adoption they just needed time to find the right family. By moving these cats out of foster homes, the fosters could take in more urgent animals requiring special care.

The Cat Nook Cafe also served as an adoption point for no-contact adoptions. The café was a space to meet where both the adopter and the volunteers could feel comfortable with the proper social distance restrictions in place. We could control cleaning protocols, number of people present, etc. It made everyone involved feel more comfortable during such an uncertain time.

How many pets did this grant help?

35

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

Emerald was a mom cat who had a tough start in life. Emerald was found by ACDC at a local shelter. She had a litter of kittens, all of whom had health issues shortly after they were born. As a result, the family had to stay in foster care much longer than was normal for a healthy mom cat and kittens. Finally in January 2020, Emerald and her babies (Oz, Dorothy, Kansas and Munchkin) were finally ready to be put up for adoption. Dorothy and Kansas quickly found homes, Munchkin was easily placed, but Emerald and Oz were still waiting in an adoption center for their forever home.

Once COVID 19 hit we had to quickly find placement for a number of cats. Emerald and Oz did well with other cats, so they were placed at the Cat Nook Cafe. They enjoyed their time there and Emerald became the resident “mom” cat to all the other cats. While it was not a requirement that the two be adopted together, we were very happy to have an adopter who wanted the both of them.

Without the space the Cat Nook Cafe provided, we would not have been able to take in more animals during the height of the COVID 19 crisis in SE Pennsylvania. We can’t thank PetFinder enough for helping us out during such an uncertain time.