COURTENAY, B.C. – The Kitty Cat Prevent-A-Litter Society (KCP) celebrated a milestone on Sunday.
They held an open house to mark the completion of renovations to their Comox Road facility. The Comox Valley-based organization rescues and helps socialize feral cats in the hopes that they will be adopted into a safe home.
“Our number one focus is making sure that we are helping and assisting with colonies, feral cats, making sure they’re spayed, neutered and returned to the colony if they can’t be socialized,” said KCP’s Executive Director Lee-Ann Dixon-Phillips.
Socializing means the cats can be fostered or adopted into a home.
“Of course the ending goal is helping them get socialized, loving them and (helping them become) affectionate, social cats and then adopting them to amazing homes,” Dixon-Phillips said.
Over the last year, the organization has been renovating its facilities along Comox Road, right beside the Comox Valley Animal Hospital.
Dixon-Phillips said it’s a joy to see the renovations completed.
“It’s a massive change, so we started with one room, and a lot of people remember us as this one room, and we functioned everything out of that one room,” she said.
“That’s where our cats were, where our data entry office work and everything got done. Now we have seven rooms. It is amazing.”
She said the additional rooms allow KCP to help even more cats than before.
“It feels pretty good…we have our own medical room, our own intake room. We have a room that is specifically for cats that come in and our sick, if we’re concerned that they’re contagious, they can go into their own (isolation) room with separate ventilation until the veterinarian can come over that same day and check them out,” she explained.
Dixon-Phillips said KCP has a trapping team that rescues and helps bring the cats in.
“They’ll go out to known colonies, or sometimes we’ll get reports of people spotting some cats. Typically, these (reports and colonies) are not in neighbourhoods. These are way out in the bush, sometimes up the (Mount Washington) and in areas where cats should not be at,” she said.
“They’ll go out, trap, and assess the cat from there, and they’ll go through all the necessary steps. I can’t stress enough that we are not in neighbourhoods doing this.”
Dixon-Phillips said after the trapping, the next step depends on the condition of the cat brought into the facility.
“If they’ve been trapped, then they’ll go into our feral room and will be assessed from there. We have a full team that assess each cat, the vet comes in the same day…so it’s a pretty quick process on the cat’s end to get them as comfortable as we need to get them,” she said.
She added that there are many volunteer opportunities, and KCP is always looking for extra help.
Some of the opportunities include working with the trapping team, fostering, cleaning and even joining the Board of Directors.
The Kitty Cat Prevent-A-Litter Society’s facilities are located at 3110 Comox Road in Courtenay.
For more details, you can call 250-941-PALS (7257) or visit www.kittycatpals.com.
