Kočky Online

As the winter season hits us, and temperatures fall, Czech animal shelters are in even greater need of support. Food can be left outside for strays, but water will quickly turn to ice and subzero temperatures cause animals to take shelter anywhere they can.

Unfortunately, at all times of the year, there are pet owners who neglect to spay/neuter their animals, and deal with unwanted puppies or kittens by abandoning them.  If the animals are lucky, they are found by a Good Samaritan who will take the time and effort to catch them and either take them home and care for them, or hand them over to a shelter. In addition, a pet can be – and, sometimes, is – taken to a shelter when the owner dies.

The amount of money needed by a shelter, she says, depends on the number of animals in the shelter. In summer and autumn, this number is always higher, with an increased number of unwanted kittens and puppies. Shelters have to pay for rent, utilities, food, cat litter, veterinary care and medicine. The community can help by donating money and cat litter; adopting shelter animals or fostering cats in their homes until a new home is found. During this time, the cat will receive all the necessary injections, as well as being spayed or neutered.

As far as adopting a cat is concerned, Fenclová does not know of any shelters that would prevent a foreigner from adopting. Some shelters require permanent residency status before they will allow an animal to be taken by a foreigner. In all adoption cases, the new owner must fill in and sign an adoption contract. One of the important clauses in the contract is that, if the new owner cannot care for the cat anymore, the cat will be returned to the shelter. This prevents them from ending up on the streets once again.

Before a cat is adopted, it is wormed and fleas, ticks, and other little pests are eliminated. Then the vaccination begins; the cat will be vaccinated, at minimum, against panleukopenia, rhinotracheitis and calicivirosis. Though the shelters would like to provide more extensive vaccination, money, as always, is limited.

Some cats have greater difficulty finding a home. These include ones that are older; are very shy or fearful or handicapped. It´s not at all unusual to find a three-legged cat in a shelter, or a cat with one eye. Prospective owners tend to bypass these cats in favor of “something special”, as Fenclová puts it, as if shelters dealt primarily in purebred cats. Black cats and tabby cats are not on the most-favored list. A combination of these three – shy, handicapped, and “plain” – is, in Fenclová´s words, “lethal”.

Another sad story is that sometimes a cat will be adopted, then returned to the shelter, for various reasons. Fenclová mentions that “this happens more frequently than we wish”. Sometimes, within, two days, the new owner begins to complain, and the cat goes right back to the shelter.

Can foreigners be volunteers at a shelter?

This is a sticky situation, admits Fenclová. Often, a cat shelter is run out of someone´s home. It depends, she says, on the language skills of the shelter owner, and whether she will allow foreign volunteers in her home.

Some of the biggest challenges facing shelters (apart from money, of course) are, she says, irresponsibility, ignorance, lack of spaying/neutering, and “crazy old people” who live in flats with dozens of animals. When the person dies, the flat is filled with undernourished, diseased animals; treating them takes tens of thousands of crowns.

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