Seven out of
ten cats that enter into the nation’s shelter system are killed. Beautiful,
healthy creatures, killed because there is no room, no funding and they cannot
find their way home. The fault is not the shelters, they do the best they can
with the resources they have. Shelters need our help, but not in the place that
may be typically assumed.
MissingCitters.com, a leading pet
lost and found website, provides advice for those working with
shelters to help solve this problem and bring the cat’s back home. The situation is analogous to the story of The
Little Dutch Boy who plugged a dyke, made a small personal sacrifice, and
prevented a flood.
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| I am a neutered male, buff and white Domestic Shorthair. The shelter staff think I am about 6 months old. |
Shelters
spend almost all of their time at the “back door” of the shelter trying to get animals
adopted, focusing on “the flood.” If no
one rescues a stray from the shelter or if they are not someone’s ideal pet,
they are getting euthanized. With just a bit of attention on the "front door", as strays are brought to shelters, abysmal
return-to-owner rates can be significantly improved.
MissingCritters.com
offers some tips and solutions for what shelters and local communities can do
to support animal rescues and get cats back home where they belong:
- Websites. Almost all shelters have websites, but
many are old, not kept up, or do not clearly display where recently found cats
can be viewed online. They are just not
being used to their fullest potential. Shelters
can use their website to post missing cats, pictures and keep in contact with
missing pet owners in their local community.
If a website savvy individual was able to spend time helping shelters to
make their site more user friendly and provide a platform of information for
visitors, those looking for their missing cats would have a place to start.
It takes only a moment to be the
difference that saves a kitty’s life.
- The Internet. All it would take is a post to a
free online lost and found site to give the owners one more chance to find
their beloved pet. High school students
who are required to perform community service and community volunteers can
increase the chance of stray cats being found by just twice-a-week visits to a
local shelter. They need only enter
newly arrived cat’s information into one of these sites that are free and
require minimal effort – e.g., a posting on Craigslist.org
takes only a moment and a photo can be easily uploaded from a computer; with
MissingCritters.com, a stray cat can
be posted instantly with a cell phone or on a computer by taking a photo and emailing it to post@MissingCritters.com.
- Lost and Found. Most shelters have some sort of
lost and found program on their website, fliers, or other local means.
Providing help to get the cats found, instead of just focusing on adoption, can
make the number of cats being euthanized decrease dramatically.
MissingCritters.com
was created to provide lost and found solutions for lost pets. They aim to
educate the community, offer assistance to shelters and advise on how to help
get animals back home where they belong.
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