Cats Galore, houses over 150 cats at a time. About half of the cats are readily adoptable, but many of of our cats will require special people to adopt them.  These less adoptable cats are termed "special needs" because they are too wild, too timid, or have health issues that are a nuisance or require more vet care than normal.  We euthanize only when it is the merciful thing to do because the health of the cat is severely compromised and it has very little quality of life left.  We rely heavily on our veterinarian to advise us if a cat cannot be rehabilitated and is in pain and should be put down to ease its suffering.  We have a vet that thinks like we do and does not like to put any animal down that has a reasonable promise of good life ahead.

A few of our cats are tame cats that came from homes where their owners died, or they could no longer keep them due to unfortunate circumstances. However, most of our cats come to us from our Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) program where we capture feral cats, take them to the veterinarian, and have them spayed or neutered, vaccinated, ears tattooed for identification, and provided with any needed veterinary care.

Most of the adult cats captured in our TNR program are very wild and cannot be readily tamed, so they are returned to their home area where a caretaker is feeding them and watching over them.

Kittens we capture that are young enough, or stray cats that are tame or semi-tame are brought to our shelter after being spayed/neutered, vaccinated and provided any needed veterinary care. Kittens are tamed and socialized and tame cats re-socialized as needed before they are adopted out.

Sometimes the adult cats we think are tame do not re-socialize well, and they become permanent residents of the shelter, unless we find good barn cats homes for them. Beauty, above, was such a case. Even her good looks do not find her a home when she dives for cover when any stranger enters her domain - she seldom lets even her regular caretaker pet her.

Not all the kittens we tame become adoptable because they are too skittish or not overly good looking, such as our black and white duo pictured above who were not young enough to be adequately tamed when captured and brought to the shelter.

Or perhaps they have health problems that most people are not willing to deal with. For example, Manx kittens like JoJo below, are sometimes born with deformed backs, which affects their ability to eliminate properly. These cats become permanent residents as well unless a very special person comes along that is willing to take on a cat with special issues.

Fortunately, most of the kittens we tame and stray tame cats we rescue are perfectly adoptable and make good house pets.  We  try to find the right match for both adopters and our cats so that it will be a happy and permanent match.  However, if for any reason the match does not work out, we happily accept the cat(s) back without any problem as long as they have not been declawed. 

Because of our open housing for the cats, the stress level is too high for declawed cats who are unable to properly defend themselves.  The added stress on declawed males tends to start them spraying, and then we cannot find indoor homes for them.  Being declawed, they should never be left to try to defend themselves without claws outside.  For these reasons we do not take in cats that have been declawed, even if they originally came from our shelter.

Little Louie (Louie of the Steak) was well loved by the little girls in his adoptive family. However, Louie was apt to jump up on counters in the kitchen. One lucky day he discoverd a newly purchased steak waiting to be put into the refrigerator. He made it through four layers of plastic and was just getting to the good part when he got caught!  Mom knew Dad would blow a gasket if he ever came across such misbehavior, so made the choice amidst many tears to return Louie to us.  Louie, who also has a strong tendency to nip your face, has not adopted out again, but is happy at the shelter.   He still takes every opportunity to avail himself of canned cat food, however!