Ebb and Flow

Sometimes there doesn't seem to be any logic or reason to the ebbs and flows of populations in and out of the shelter. It's been an astonishing couple of weeks for cats. Kitten business has finally picked up and the open cat room is as sparsely populated as I have ever seen it. It seems like I just got the new cats up on our web site and they were out the door. This is really good news. This time of year we usually see the older cats wait until the kitten season has passed. Even a long timer like Ophelia found a home. Of course there are always blacks cats left. On the other hand, we are full up with dogs. For the first half of the year we were doing so well with dogs. Now almost all our kennels are full. Almost 40 dogs are there waiting for homes. But we always have to leave some kennels empty for the strays that animal control and the public bring in. For some dogs that inevitably means their time is up. Now the staff has to decide who's too old, who's more aggressive, who we don't have the time to work with. It's a hard decision, balancing the lives of animals that didn't ask to be here. This is when you really begin to hate the people who drop off dogs for stupid reasons. "It barks", they say. "We just don't have time anymore." "It got too big." What they don't understand is that at times like this, with our limited space, more dogs in means more dogs dead.