Halifax animal shelters struggling to house cats

Animal shelters in the Halifax area are struggling to find homes for the huge numbers of abandoned cats in the municipality. 

There are thousands of cats that end up in shelters every year, and when one of those shelters can't take in any more animals it creates problems for other shelters.  

• Catty Cape Breton art project draws attention to abandoned and feral cats
• Nova Scotia SPCA tackles feral cat problem with trap-neuter-return program

"All of these other rescues are going to start to feel the strain from what my rescue cannot do," said Erin Lynch, the founder of Sympathetic Ear Animal Rescue Society in Cook's Brook, N.S. 

"They're going to have more kittens coming to them, more people wanting their help, which puts a strain on their rescue." 

'This has put my whole rescue into lock down'

Last year Lynch took in 372 cats. In the first six months of this year she's already taken in 200.

Now she's had to stop helping cats because of an outbreak of feline leukemia and panleukopenia at her shelter. Both diseases are contagious and can be fatal to cats. 

"This has put my whole rescue into lock down basically. We can't move, we can't move kittens in, we can't move kittens out," said Lynch. "At the same time I can't help anybody until this is solved." 

"Now there's going to be animals that won't get help."        

Lynch has had three kittens from a six-kitten litter die in the last 48 hours. 

"What I've gone through in the last 48 hours is heartbreaking. My foster homes are heartbroken. At the same time it's frustrating and maddening because there's a simple solution, there's testing, vaccinating, spaying and neutering." 

Rescue groups 'bombarded'

About 25 to 35 people have recently called Sympathetic Ear Animal Rescue trying to get cats into the shelter.

Lynch said all the shelters in the Halifax area are overburdened with cats and would have a hard time absorbing any more. 

"The rest of us get asked to take more animals and eventually if we take more animals we're putting ourselves at the exact same risk," said Sonya Higgins, the founder of Healing Animal Scars, an animal shelter in Cole Harbour. 
  
"I've got 16 kittens to find homes for - if I were to take a new kitten in now that could potentially infect them all, I wouldn't be able to put any of them up for adoption. Our medical, veterinary bills would be astronomically through the roof."   

"Every day all of the rescue groups across Halifax Regional Municipality and beyond are bombarded with requests for help about stray and feral cats," said Higgins. 

Unwanted cats are a strain on shelters

Heather Woodin is provincial administrative coordinator with the Nova Scotia SPCA. She said the shelter system is struggling to keep up with the number of unwanted cats. 

Sometimes the SPCA even has waiting lists for people wanting to give their cats to the shelter. 

Last year the SPCA took in 2,500 stray and abandoned cats and the organization estimates there are several hundred thousand feral cats across the province.  

Mobile clinic will help

The SPCA is trying to reduce those numbers by starting a mobile spay and neuter clinic that would travel across the province.

"We'll need volunteers to help us trap the cats, the spay and neuter clinic will roll in, help to fix those cats and then those cats will then be released back to the community," said Woodin. 

That mobile clinic is expected to start running at the end of June. 

In the meantime Erin Lynch at Sympathetic Ear Animal Rescue is waiting for the recent outbreak to pass, but that will cost her. She will have to pay thousands to try and treat the kittens she has, adding to organization's $10,000 vet bill.