Our $2,000 disaster grant helped Kern County Animal Services move 280 homeless cats, dogs, puppies and kittens to a new shelter after the organization was evicted from its rented facility in Bakersfield, Calif. (The group had previously been known as Kern County Animal Shelter, but changed its name once it moved to its new home.)
“Every animal that was at the old shelter was moved to the new one,” Judi Daunell, president of the Friends of the Kern County Animal Shelters Foundation, tells us. “Thanks so much to the Petfinder Foundation for their generous grant.”
Daunell says Kern County Animal Services’ eviction came after a prolonged contractual impasse between the county-funded organization and its landlord, the City of Bakersfield. The eviction left Kern County Animal Services with just weeks to locate a suitable new facility and transfer hundreds of homeless pets into it.
The move to the organization’s new Fruitvale, Calif., building took place over the last weekend in September, and our grant helped the large undertaking go smoothly, Daunell says.
“More than 60 people were involved on two days, logging out, crating, transporting and then settling the animals into their new kennels and cages,” she adds.
About one-third of the granted funds covered moving-weekend expenses, so the remainder are being used to outfit the shelter’s new community cat room with enrichment toys and activities, Daunell says.
This is exciting, she says, because the organization’s homeless cats have always been kept in small, individual cages.
“We’ve never had [a community cat room] before and there’s space for one now,” Daunell tells us. “I am looking into wall shelves for climbing on, washable hammocks, maybe a couple of double-decker Kuranda beds, cardboard scratchers and toys.”
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