Email  Print

Become part of the solution

Pettales: All the bark from Pets Lifeline

 

Happy Presidents Day Sonoma! What are you doing for the three-day weekend? The forecast is for beautiful weather. I am sure, dog owners everywhere will be outside enjoying the company of their devoted canine companions. Hopefully, in the future, we will have more dog parks in town to take our beloved best friends to. Check in with Sonoma Valley Dog Owners and Guardians (SVDOG) at svdog.org to find out more information about this very important subject.

 We have a couple of really nice larger dogs for adoption right now. Of course, now that we do have larger dogs, folks are coming in looking for smaller dogs. Jeesh!

 But if you are looking for a sweet, larger dog to open your heart and home to, please come down and meet Scarlett, a very energetic and beautiful 3-year-old blond lab mix. She is the color of butter, with a white on her face, chest, stomach and paws and black eyeliner around both eyes. She is quite distinctive looking. 

 Then there is Charlie, a sweet and loveable 4-year-old black and brown German shepherd mix, who loves to play ball. He is very smart, relatively well mannered and, although he barks when he wants something, he does not buy into group barking when the others get aroused. Unless he’s trying to communicate (food, water, etc.), we have witnessed him remaining very calm with canine chaos all around him. 

 I also want to start the conversation with everyone about our “community” cats. It’s time to start working on this now, before the kitten explosion happens in a few months. This term identifies all free-roaming cats including feral, abandoned, stray and un-owned cats. Cat overpopulation issue is a community responsibility – these cats all started out as someone’s pet.

 For years now, Pets Lifeline has run a very successful trap/neuter/release program. We provide the traps to a number of wonderful members of our community who trap the cats, bring them to us for spay/neuter and then release them back to their natural habitat.

 In the next month, I will be publishing a map of our community displaying where there are established feral colonies, where there is active trapping and areas that need some attention. We have a responsibility to these cats and our own animals to get these cats spayed/neutered and vaccinated. We cannot just take the cats in, but we will help to educate, spay/neuter and vaccinate to reduce the number of unhealthy and unwanted cats and kittens in our community. If you are interested in becoming a part of the solution, contact Monna Throop or Mary Green at 996-4577. 

 And speaking of kittens, if you are interested in fostering this spring and summer, contact Marianne, our goddess volunteer coordinator, at extension 104. We will have a preliminary foster orientation tomorrow, Saturday, Feb. 16, but please contact Marianne to register.

 The “kitten season” seems to extend further throughout the year. We just adopted the last of the smallest kittens (came to us in October) this weekend at the cat show in Santa Rosa, but we have a roomful of kit-teens just waiting for their forever home.

Please come meet them before the next wave of kittens comes in this spring. All cats and kittens are just $30 through the month of February.  So share your love and adopt a shelter cat.