Stephen Memorial Animinal Shelter Hosts Open House

This kitten is seen exploring the new enclosure built to house them at Stephen Memorial Animal Shelter

Oskaloosa, Iowa – Lots of changes have been happening at the Stephen Memorial Animal Shelter since the arrival of Lindsey Sime as the new Director. The shelter held a Holiday Open House on Saturday, December 17th from Noon-3pm to show off all the new changes and to look for a name for their new kitten enclosure.

Sime said that a  husband to one of the board members volunteered his time to build the new kitten enclosure located in the modular portion of the shelter grounds. The funds for the supplies to build the enclosure were donated in part by the Zears, used in conjunction with funds from a memorial donation.

Sime said the purpose of the kitten enclosure is two fold. “The main purpose was that the kittens are running around down with the adult cats and it’s really stressful to be in a animal shelter for a cat. So if you add in about 10 to 12 kittens running all over the adult cats bugging them, you know their a little lazier than the kittens. It just adds more stress for the adult cats. We wanted to have a means to let kittens still be kittens and socialize with each other, play around and let the adult cats have their time to acclimate and not be bugged.”

Sime went on to explain the second reason for having the enclosure and the kittens away from the adults. “From a disease standpoint, kittens are a lot more susceptible to what’s called upper respiratory infection. It’s really common in animal shelters. It’s like a cold, but it increases their stay here because you have to treat them, you have to treat them for about a week or so. So by not exposing them to the adult cats that may come in with that upper respiratory infection by keeping them isolated up here it’s kind of lessening the chances of the disease.”

If you haven’t been to the shelter in the past few months, you will be surprised by the amount of changes that have taken place. Offices have been moved allowing for better utilization of space Sime said. “Well we had this huge building and pretty much the only thing being housed in it were stray cats, and they were just over on one wall, and we had this whole area that was just not being utilized.”

All of those paws out at the shelter have lots of needs and in particular volunteers. “We love volunteers, especially dog walkers. Dog don’t get out as much as they really should because we have 6 people working here. We try our best, but they [dogs] could use 1 on 1 time. If you’re not into dogs, the cats always need their nails trimmed or brushing or just socialization.”