Potential pets used for experiments if not adopted
By Tanya Arnoti
Lonely Ryerson students looking for company for the long year ahead can find a friend and save a life. All nine of them.
Local animal shelter officials believe adopting a cat is a good way to beat those homesickness blues.
Cats living in shelters across Metro risk being put to sleep or taken to research centres if they aren’t adopted within 72 hours, said Cindy Almog, co-ordinator of the Toronto Cat Rescue Program.
Cats of all ages are brought into shelters lost, sick or abused. But shelters are overcrowded and lack the funds to support the cats.
In comes the Toronto Cat Rescue team.
The group is a registered charity that takes two or three cats a week from shelters and gives them to one of eight foster families in the program. They nurse sick cats back to health, spay and neuter them and find suitable homes.
Vivian Greening adopted her first cat from the Toronto Cat Rescue program in December, 1994. “Cindy (Almog) gave me this little, skinny, sick and sneezing grey cat. But now, Asher’s a big, fat, crazy thing who sings when he purrs.”
Greening says she has always loved animals and when she realized how much help was needed to sustain the program, she became a foster person. Now Greening has 10 cats running around her one-bedroom apartment. Her oldest cat is eight-years-old, and the youngest is just three hours.
“These animals can’t speak for themselves. I can’t just let an innocent animal die. A lot of our cats are pregnant, sick, or have been abused. No one wants to take time and love to bring them back to where they once were. But I do.”
Toronto Cat Rescue relies on donations from its adopters to keep the program alive. But the program gets more cats than they can place, with each cat costing approximately $60 in medical fees alone. Often the volunteers dig into their own pockets to buy food or pay medical expenses.
Greening says the program desperately needs public support. “People can help by understanding that old cats are just as loving as kittens, and everyone should spay or neuter their pets as soon as they are of age.”
She also says the program needs foster families, donations and people to take cats to the veterinarian.
For further information, contact Cindy Almog of Toronto Cat Rescue at 787-3051.
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