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This room is the cat's meow
Published September 3, 2006
Teenage cats bounded across the room, tackling each other before landing in a belly-down sprawl on the cool tile floor. An older cat stretched out — forearms in front with tail in the air — as it enjoyed an eyeful of cornfields from its waist-high perch.
The feline residents of the Guadalupe County Humane Society are purring more than usual lately, thanks to a new cat room on the shelter’s southeast side.
The wing boasts eight 6-foot wide by 7-foot deep rooms enclosed by double glass doors and room-size windows — a far cry from the 3-foot by 3-foot metal wire cages the cats formerly called home.
“We have to do a lot of window cleaning, but that’s OK,” GCHS Director Margarett Svatek said. “I think we’ve created a real open, airy feel for the cats, and hopefully, they think it’s a real open, airy, homey feel.
“The first day they were in here, the teenagers played for a solid four hours. It was wonderful seeing them like that. I was just overwhelmed with joy. You could just sit there and laugh at them.”
Along with a better view and lots of sunlight, the cats’ new shelter affords them much more room to climb, jump and romp. The spaces are designed for multiple cats, so the animals have made new friends through the move, too.
Open grates above doorways allow fresh air to fill kitty-cat lungs expanding with new opportunity for exercise, which will go a long way to prevent upper respiratory infections common in kennels, Svatek said.
“The new rooms are so much better for their health,” Svatek said. “The better ventilation is a much-needed improvement, and now they have room to play and develop their muscles.
“But it’s not just good for their health — it’s good for their overall sense of happiness. They’re interacting with other cats, which makes them a better cat when they’re adopted out.”
And the new facility offers some creature comforts for human caretakers, as well. Next to the eight suites are nine holding cages where workers can deposit cats while cleaning rooms.
Sinks, which will soon be adorned with back-splash murals of happy kittens, are available in the main room and isolation room. The latter, also a new addition, features traditional cages for animals who have medical problems or are too young to be adopted out.
“And we just have so much storage,” staff-member Mary Pruette said, opening a linen closet to demonstrate.
Though the no-kill shelter’s goal is, of course, to find each and every animal a home, the GCHS staff hopes the cats in its care will have a much better stay as they pass through.
“It’s not a home, but it’s a lot better than what they were in before,” Svatek said. “They were in those little cages 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and some of the adult cats have been here over a year.
“We were so happy for them that we didn’t even think about all the hard work that went into it, we were just so thankful for the donations that made this possible.”
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