A local animal shelter has been getting huge support from the community.

Bide-Awhile took in two dozen cats and kittens last week – 14 females and 10 males -after a call for help, according to Sam Cole, the Communications and Marketing Coordinator.

It all began after they heard from a retired rescuer.

“They had agreed to help someone in their community with some kittens. They didn’t know the number of kittens they were getting themselves into, so when they arrived there, they took 24 kittens and cats, and they reached out to us looking for assistance.”

That’s when Bide-Awhile took them all in.

Typically, the shelter houses 50 animals, so this put them over capacity and in need of thousands of dollars.

The shelter has a fundraiser to help cover the cost of spaying and neutering, which quickly surpassed a donation goal of $5,000.

However, to cover all the costs to care for the animals, Cole tells us, they need roughly $24,000.

“It is a large number…but we do feel very confident in our community and the support we reached so far has been incredible overwhelming…”

Loveable and social

Although they were a little shy and stressed from the move when they first arrived at Bide-Awhile, the cats were very well behaved and mostly healthy.

Several had runny eyes and there were some upper respiratory issues, and one needs an umbilical hernia.

Despite this, Cole says, they were well loved and very social.

They are now in isolation for a couple of weeks in order to assess what the cats need, have them spayed, neutered, microchipped, vaccinated, dewormed and more.

Adoption

In addition to the financial help, the interest in adopting and fostering the cats has also been amazing.

Cole tells us they don’t have a specific timeline of when the cats will be ready, but they expect it will be in September.

In the meantime, Bide-Awhile thanks everyone for their incredible support so far and hope to continue to raise more.

Cole says raffle will start this Friday and run from August 16-30, with a 50-50 online with the funds set to go to animal care.

“The more money we are able to raise, the more companions we can bring in, the more we can get into homes.”