Attleboro MA - 50 cats left homeless by foreclosure
From the Boston Globe:
Attleboro shelter scrambles to find homes for dozens of cats
By Jack Nicas, Globe Correspondent
An Attleboro foreclosure left about 50 cats with no place to go, and an already over-capacity animal shelter is now scrambling to find homes for most of them.
"We had to do something," said Ellaina Knight, the feline-care coordinator at the Friends of Attleboro Animal Shelter. "These are nice cats; we don't want them to be euthanized."
After three nearby shelters took in 14 of the cats over the weekend, the shelter housed the 36 remaining felines in a volunteer's barn. But with horses due back at the barn next week, volunteers may have to make a difficult decision, Knight said.
"They'd have to be put down," she said of next week�s worst-case scenario. "It's an extremely urgent situation."
The cats began accumulating in the home two years ago, after their former owner lost his job. Then his wife died unexpectedly 18 months later, leaving him in a deep depression, Knight said.
"There were a handful of cats that were not fixed and they just kept breeding," Knight said. "To an extent, they were all he had and he didn't want to get rid of them.''
Butch Keefer, the Attleboro animal control officer, said he wasn't aware of the situation until recently, but had no power to act anyway.
"We have no ordinance on cats, so when we were made aware of that I gave the homeowner a list of shelters," he said. "But unfortunately, timing-wise, there weren't many places to go."
Many area shelters are at or over capacity, Knight said, forcing her shelter to take the animals despite its lack of room. The shelter has 18 cages for cats and oversaw 80 cats, many in foster homes, before this weekend's influx.
"Personally we've had a lot of people abandoning animals. And adoptions are way down in these economic times," she said.
Nancy Gonsalves, a volunteer at the Norton Animal Shelter, said she only has space for three or four cats, but is unsure if they'll help out.
Knight said the cats are not sickly, and only suffer from fleas and ear mites. All the cats would have to be spayed or neutered if adopted.
"It�s a costly process. We don't know how we'll pay for it, but we're asking for help everywhere and anywhere," including veterinarians who might donate their services, she said.
But there is hope. Knight said the shelter's e-mail inbox has been filling up with offers.
To contact the shelter, call (508) 761-5617 or e-mail [email protected].
