I unfortunately got up much earlier than I should have this morning, so I’m going to try getting this post together before I go to work, to post later. I know a lot of my fellow Blaugustians write in the mornings, but that’s never been something that works well for me, so we’ll see how this goes.
Blaugust is a time I try different things, so at least there’s that!
When I posted “Introduce Yourself: So, what do I do all day?,” I’d intended that post to be a little more “A Day in the Life.” Only, once I started explaining the basics, the word count got away from me. I want to come back to it, so I’m going to start doing that today.
Our days in the Animal Resource Center don’t really follow a set schedule since they rely so heavily on the needs of the public, but I’m going to try to do this post about our morning routine and lost and found pets. Then I’ll do another post about our other duties. Trying to put all of our duties into one post had me running super long again!
So, let’s try this again. Part two of a day in the life of me, working in the Animal Resource Center at a large open admission animal shelter. Another light content warning for animal euthanasia. I will not be sharing any details, but it’s a topic that does come up when I talk about my job. I don’t think it came up in this section, but just in case I missed something.
I usually try to get to work about half an hour earlier than the rest of my team. This is not because I’m a morning person or a get to work early person. It’s just that I’m the only one working 4 ten hour shifts a week, and to guarantee that I sometimes have to pick up a little extra time in the morning. Sometimes I end up going over on hours doing it, so it’s kind of a gamble.
We usually try to have 2-3 employees on shift if no one is sick or otherwise out. Monday-Friday we also have 1-3 managers who can step in and help if they are able and not tied up with something else. Saturday it’s one manager, and on Sundays we do not have a manager in our department. We are often running short staffed, like most shelters, so I say 2-3 employees but it’s often just two.
The first thing we do is cleaning and feeding. We’re primarily responsible for the cats in the intake room. These are the cats who are still relatively new to the shelter, sometimes TVAR/TNR (Trap Vaccinate Alter Return, which some places call simply “Trap Neuter Return”) feral/community cats who have to hang around a bit instead of being immediately released, and sometimes sick or injured cats that need some amount of monitoring but not enough to stay in the surgery department. If we’re very full, sometimes it’s just cats that don’t have another room or kennel to go to yet.
It’s quite a mix, and the cats are often scared and still getting used to their temporary home. We need to be careful not to stress them more than necessary, not to let any of them get loose, and not to get scratched or bitten ourselves.
Feral cats are smol superheroes and can actually fly, if you were previously unaware.
We are sometimes responsible for the kitten ICU, where we keep some of the kittens too young to adopt out, and who are waiting for a foster family. If other areas of the shelter are short in the morning, we help them out as well. They try to primarily keep us with cats, but we’ve helped walk dogs before. We do handle dogs in our daily work, so we have some training there. Extremely reactive dogs are handled by staff who are more familiar with them.
In theory, we would clean all the cat kennels (14 in our room), feed all the cats, sweep and mop all the floors in the intake cat room and our section of the lobby, and do general tidying for the first two hours or so of our shift. In reality, members of the public are often coming up needing help long before we officially open. We don’t send people away just because we’re not open yet, so it’s a lot of back and forth and being pulled in different directions, trying to get everything done.
Three days a week, we also do intake for our shelter’s TVAR feral cat program. That starts an hour before we “open”, so it’s something else to juggle. Cats for TVAR are supposed to arrive in traps and no more than two per person/location to speed the processing. This often doesn’t happen, and we hate to turn people away, so we’re left trying to transfer fractious feral cats from carriers into holding cages.
We also try to do our reminder calls for yesterday’s TVAR’s in the morning. We try to get those cats out of the shelter and back home as soon as possible, since often feral cats are immensely stressed by being inside and away from their territory. Same issue as intake where they are supposed to be in their traps, ready to go, to speed the process – but if they were not brought in traps then we’re transferring fractious feral cats back into carriers to go home.
Any time I mention “intake,” know there are multiple parts to it. There’s physically bringing the animal inside and transferring them to a kennel or transfer carrier, of course. But there’s also varying degrees of paperwork and logging the pet into the system. If it’s a group of animals, they all need to be input individually so everyone can be tracked throughout their stay.
It takes longer than you’d think, and has multiple steps, is what I’m saying. (Plus, we often need to stop mid-process to take care of someone who has just arrived at the shelter.) This also goes for any outcome of giving pets back – it’s more complicated and time consuming than just handing over a leash or carrier!
Also on the list of, “Try to do as early as possible” is making calls to any owners of found animals that we have contact information for. Sometimes that’s microchip information. Sometimes it’s from a tag they are wearing, or by calling a vet’s office based on a rabies tag. It can also be trying to contact the families of people who are incarcerated, in hospital, or deceased. Sometimes we have owner information because a family was evicted and wasn’t able to pick up their pets before the landlord had Animal Control seize them.
More often than I wish, the contact information winds up being incorrect. The owner never updated their phone number, didn’t register a microchip, or rehomed their pet to a new family and that family didn’t update the microchip. At my shelter, we will try every avenue possible. We check local lost and found pet posts on social media as much as we are able, and we call whatever facility implicated the microchip to see if they have any other contact information.
We do this because we care, of course, but we also need to document every step we take. In my state, pets are considered personal legal property. One of the results of that, is if you can’t prove you tried every avenue to find an owner before adopting out a pet, that family can later have you criminally charged. It also means we cannot, on our own, deny an owner from reclaiming a pet for any reason. Animal Control and/or the police can, but we legally cannot unless it’s at the direction of the authorities.
As for reclaiming pets, we do have spay/neuter ordinances in my county. So while a person may choose not to spay/neuter their pet there are some hefty fees associated with that decision if the pet ends up at the shelter. Since we are capable of performing a spay/neuter, they are able to reclaim their pets without those extra fees if they agree to have us perform the spay/neuter before they reclaim their pet. So there is that.
Fees are sometimes a huge source of arguments. I understand why, I’m not rich myself and unexpected bills suck. But, I also like my shelter being open and able to care for animals. Which means even excluding the county fees, it helps to collect something for the care we’ve given the animals while they were with us. We don’t just bring an animal in and put it into a kennel. We perform a full vet check, give vaccinations, and administer heartworm testing. If there are medical concerns, we treat them. We are required by state law to microchip pets before returning them, if they aren’t already chipped. We of course feed them and care for them while they are with us.
We also 100% would rather an animal go home with their family than stay with us. We can’t do anything about the county fees, but if a pet is spayed/neutered or if the owner agrees to have it done, we will absolutely work with people to help get their pet home. It’s a balancing act. We need to at least try to cover our bills so we can stay open, but we never want the cost to be the only thing keeping a pet from going home, either.
I’m giving this part a bit out of order, but as a sidenote, my shelter is one that does full walkthroughs for lost pets. Trying to identify a pet over the phone or through a picture online is not always effective, and there’s too much confusion that way as well. My department helps owners do the Lost Reports. Kennel techs are usually supposed to do the actual walkthroughs since my department is so busy, but if we’re short on techs we do the walkthroughs ourselves.
I would very much like to get into owner surrenders in this post since that’s often the most mentally and emotionally hard part of my job. And I haven’t even mentioned stray intake other than the TVAR/TNR program! But that’s going to have to wait for next time, I’m running long again. So, picture all that plus a dozen other duties, plus the phones are always ringing and there’s always people arriving who need help!
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LFGryph 