Photo courtesy of Bob Schneider

By Hayley Ferguson

Shelter Capacity

APARC introduces new capacity reporting program

Jul 22, 2019 | 3:23 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – Two weeks ago, Medicine Hat’s Alberta Pound and Rescue Centre put out a call for help when they reached a critical shortage of space for cats.

They say they ran out of space for cats after a 20 per cent increase in their cat population in just a few days.

To help avoid that from happening again, the shelter has implemented a “Cat-Pacity Report” that will provide up-to-date information on shelter capacity for the public.

Although they will still have shelter numbers available, APARC genereal manager Kaylyn Genio says that those numbers don’t always give a full picture of what capacity looks like.

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“We just want to be transparent with the public. So this Cat-Pacity program lets us do this in an easy way to read. So it’s green, yellow, red.” She explained.

Genio says that they’ve had 36 adoptions since the call for help. They were also able to transfer some cats and had people use their Barn buddy program, which places cats not suitable for traditional domestic companionship into barns, shops, and warehouses.

With those, Genio says that they are in the green.

“We’re OK for capacity. We can still do intake, can still function. We still need adopters and fosters. But we’re functioning OK.” Genio said.

She says the warm weather means kitten season though. Making it a possibility they reach capacity problems again.

“Once we get to yellow, we like to let the public know that ‘hey we’re coming up on red. It could get a little bit more tricky. And a lot busier around here.’ So we encourage more people to come in if their thinking about that pet.” She continued. “Once we hit red, that’s when we’re a bit more in trouble. We could be thinking about maybe euthanizing for space, which we’ve never done before. So it’s something we really don’t want to have to be in that position.”

Genio says the one of the best way for the community help make sure they never reach red is to spay and neuter pets.