Today I visited my local animal shelter.
The Ipswich Humane Group holds visiting hours at the town animal shelter on Sundays from 2:00 to 4:00, and today I went to see what I’ve been contributing money and supplies (through my vet’s office) to. I brought a 20-pound bag of catfood and a 20-pound bag of litter. I’ll be going back with more as often as I can.
It’s at the end of a narrow, winding road near the cemetery, a small, neat building. Inside there’s an office/sitting area to the left with a large window to the right into the cat room.
The cat room… Oh, my. No tiny wire cages for these strays, nope. It’s a good-sized L-shaped room with two wide outside windows, head-high to me, screened to allow air in when the window’s swung out, and with broad shelves at the bottom so the cats can sit or lie up there and look out. The floor is a handsome faux-stone tile, easily cleaned. There are two huge litterboxes tucked in one end of the L, away from the cat furniture.
Cat furniture… Oh, my. Several climbing trees with carpet covering and lots of roosting troughs and platforms and tunnels for hiding. A cage for new arrivals to get acclimated to the others before being released into the group. Towels, beds, toys, a water dispenser, a food dispenser. A tiny foyer in the crook of the L so that double doors prevent escapes. And all immaculate.
In the cat room were eight or nine adult cats, including a tiny female who’d had a litter and been spayed. All clean, well-fed, collared, and healthy-looking. All but one (hiding warily) were enjoying the attention of the visitors and seemed, with only one hissing incident I observed, to get along well enough with each other.
In the little hallway in back of the cat room and office there’s a double sink, a microwave, other handy facilities, and a large storage cabinet for cat supplies. A door leads off it into another room, which has a square of four large cages for dogs (none resident currently). Each cage is about four or five feet square, with solid walls to waist height and mesh above, high enough for an adult to stand in, and mesh fronts/doors. The floor is solid (concrete?), not wire mesh, and there are dog beds.
In one cage was a mother cat and her too young to adopt out yet kittens, being visited and cuddled by a volunteer and her small daughter. A sign noted they’d all been spoken for, even the mother. There was a separate small room, with a windowed door, set up with a large wire cage and cat toys, beds, etc., a window in the outside wall, and a tomcat, recently captured, resident in quarantine. He was, when I peeked in, asleep on a blanket atop the cage.
In the cat room I encountered a mother with her three kids, who’d come to see if by any chance the shelter had their lost cat. He was a wanderer they’d begun by feeding and wound up taking in. When they’d moved to another home in Ipswich they’d taken him along but let him out one day in November and he’d disappeared, not to be found despite their searching. They feared the coyotes had gotten him but had decided to come see if by some slight chance he was at the shelter, having called and learned there were a couple of large tabbies among the residents awaiting adoption.
No luck. The two large friendly tabbies weren’t him. They played with the other cats for a while, then went into the back to visit the kittens.
A while later I saw them come out of the back area. The mother looked as if she’d been crying. After visiting the kittens they’d been about to leave but had peeked through the door into the quarantine room.
It was their cat.
