The Windsor-Essex Humane Society is teaming up with shelters as far away as Ottawa to help find cats and kittens happy homes.
More than 500 cats are currently being cared for in Windsor-Essex and with the shelter running at full capacity St. Catherine's Lincoln County Humane Society is loaning out its transport vehicle to move 62 cats to shelters in Ottawa and Pickering.
Executive Director Melanie Coulter tells AM800 News shelters helping each other out by taking on overflow is nothing new.
"It is common that we'll transfer them, but what's unique about this is that we have a partnership with a separate shelter who's not actually sending or receiving cats, but is making there transport vehicle available to get the cats from our shelter to Ottawa," she says.
Coulter says getting cats into good homes is a challenge at the end of the summer — people don't want to commit to a pet during vacation season and it just happens to be the peak season for new born kittens.
"That's where transfers like this where we can take advantage of space elsewhere is really valuable in helping to keep our cats here healthier and hopefully get them all into homes more quickly," says Coulter. "They [Ottawa] really called on the community to step up and adopt and their community came through, adopted lots of cats and kittens, that gave them a little bit of space to help ease our space crunch here."
The humane society is offering a reduced adoption fee of $99 for the remainder of August.
Coulter says the transport departs Saturday morning.
— with files from AM800's Rob Hindi.