On Wednesday of this week, the KC Pet Project took in 109 animals. We're an open intake facility, so some days you're at the mercy of what animal control delivers that day. But man, did they deliver.
To put this in perspect, our small-ish shelter has a capacity for about 250 or so animals comfortably. Beyond that, it gets pretty crazy. We impount about 550 a month, on a busy month, so 109 is about what we get in a week, not a day.
On Thursday, we were able to ship out 65 (ish) cats to other area shelters. The other area shelters really helped us out in our time of need (and our cat rescue coordinator is amazing). Dogs were still a problem though, as everyone in the city is full on dogs. So, what do you do?
Well, you send out a plea to your media. 109 animals in a day is a lot. 200+ in a week is a lot. That's newsworthy. So, the media was contacted, and because the media in this town has been mostly supportive of animal welfare in this community of late, they came, and ran some great stories.
We coupled this a "Mother's Day Adoption Special" -- because the public loves to help when you give them a reason to. And so, yesterday, was a pretty good adoption day, but hopefully today and tomorrow will be amazing adoption days with last night's news coverage.
I've often said that it takes a village to make a No Kill Community. It takes the help of other shelters and rescues, the support of the community to adopt, and the media to cover, and a team of dedicated people at the shelter working to make it all happen. And it can. But I'm super-duper proud of our team at the shelter this week who has done amazing work in saving lives and I'm thankful for our rescue partners. And I'm thankful to the community that continues to come out and adopt when we need it most.
It takes a village -- but we've got a really good village.
This is great Brent. CONGRATULATIONS to everyone who is working so tirelessly to make this happen. I hope that other shelters are watching and that the phone is ringing off the hook with other shelters asking you how you are accomplishing what you are.
This is GREAT. GOOD ON YA MATES!!!
Posted by: Cheryl Huerta | May 12, 2012 at 04:29 PM
Great work! To everyone working on this my hat is off to you. If our company can help in anyway let me know.
Best Regards and thank you.
Posted by: Bryan Cochran | May 12, 2012 at 04:35 PM
The cats and dogs thank you and your co-workers, Brent. What an inspirational post for anyone who feels helpless about all the homeless dogs and cats. Your organization is proof that people do care and that yes, it takes a village and lots of cooperation. And thank you media for helping out.
Posted by: Jennifer Brighton | May 12, 2012 at 11:32 PM
God bless you for the good work you're doing. I hope we see the day (soon) when you don't get 109 animals in one day.
Posted by: kmk | May 15, 2012 at 10:54 PM
PLEASE we are still beyond full - please tell your KC peeps to come adopt at www.KCPetProject.org!
Posted by: MichelleD | May 16, 2012 at 02:17 PM
Wow. We just stumbled across this story while searching for animal adoption websites from reading this had to comment as it's just an incredible sounding effort. The influx of numbers versus capacity makes the mind boggle. We have a page on a totally different sort of animal adoptions from UK charities, but it's nothing like the work you are doing on the front-line of animal welfare. Good luck with all the future efforts and I hope people realise that the stray populations of animals are something we are responsible for and must act humanely when we make decisions to deal with.
Posted by: Want2Donate | May 16, 2012 at 06:13 PM