‘WE ALL LOVE CATS’: STREET CATS RESCUE VOLUNTEERS HELP STRAY, ABANDONED AND SURRENDERED FELINES

An urgent call for help by an area cat rescue was answered — and then some — according to shelter officials.

Carol Snow, executive director for Street Cats Rescue, a Barrie-based registered charity that helps stray cats find homes, says it received an overwhelming response to its recent call for feline foster families.

“We were really suffering for foster homes. During COVID, like everyone else, we had to rethink a lot of how we went about things,” she said. “We have been challenged with foster homes and the response from the community was just fantastic on that call-out.”

Snow said in the last few weeks, volunteers have already set up a dozen new foster homes, and are in the midst of setting up at least another 20.

“Through that, plus what we already had, it’s going to give us a really good foster-home group,” she said.

Street Cats Rescue, which is entirely volunteer-run, has been operating in Simcoe County for approximately 13 years and is made up of folks from all walks of life, Snow said.

“The commonality is we all love cats,” she said. “We are always looking for people of like minds to help us and to join us. We do a little bit of TNR (trap-neuter-return) to try to help manage feral cats and have a seniors program where we attempt to match senior cats to senior citizens.”

Located at 304 Shanty Bay Rd., units 5 and 6, the shelter typically houses between 40 and 50 cats at any given time, said Snow, adding Street Cats Rescue offers a “full approach” when it brings in a new cat to the shelter.

“We could probably keep double that number. The issue is that cats are very complicated creatures. When shelters start overcrowding, that creates stress, and stress can cause illness,” she said. “The No. 1 issue in cat rescue is overcrowding — and creating stress for the animals.

“We try to work within our means (and) we have very little problems with illness in the shelter, and outbreaks.”

Snow said as an organization, it is diligent in how it finds new homes for the felines.

“We try to bring the cats in and get to know them,” she said. “They’re coming in from all different backgrounds. They could be strays, abandoned, surrendered … sometimes they’re transferred from other facilities or from the animal welfare people. There are a variety of different issues we could be dealing with.

“We try to get to know (the cats) before we adopt them out,” Snow added. “We have them fully vetted. That includes vaccines, spayed or neutered, and their basic health-care treatments — as well as anything else we may notice.”

The goal is to ensure the right cat is put in the right home, she said.

“We’re not interested in doing assembly-line adoption … (where we would) bring them in and then push them out. We are trying to be part of the solution and not contribute to the problem of stray cats by making sure we’ve done a proper match-up between the cat and the adopter,” Snow said.

Street Cats Rescue will likely be looking for additional foster families as it heads into what Snow called “kitten season,” anticipating it could have as many as 100 cats out being fostered during this time.

“If you think about one mom who has five babies, well, there’s six cats right there,” she said. “As we head into the warmer weather where cats are having babies, we could probably have anywhere from 100 to 150 cats and kittens out being fostered.”

Snow said anyone interested in getting involved — either by becoming a volunteer or by adopting a cat — is invited to reach out via email or visit Street Cats Rescue’s Facebook page, where she said they will also soon be able to get information on the upcoming spring auction, which is an annual event that raises much-needed funds to help keep the shelter running.