Every January we take a look back at the year just ended, and try to find the good, the bad and the absolutely horrible to share with you. This year is much the same, except that we have some lovely new tools to help us figure out what went right and what didn't. For several years now we have been using a program called Animal Shelter Manager to keep track of the critters in our care. It's always been a great program, but now it's amazing. The developers have added in a lot of reporting functions that make year end analysis a whole lot easier. So, without further ado, the good, the bad and the atrocious from 2017.
The Good
1. Dr. Keri. We have been blessed with a wonderful relationship with Dr. Keri Hudson Reykdal. Last May Keri started bringing her mobile veterinary clinic to our adoption centre, and doing all of our cat care on site. This has saved untold hours of travel time to and from clinics, and makes sure that all of our cats get the best care, in the least stressful way. Of course, having Dr. Keri on site also got us a feature in one episode of her television show, Dr. Keri: Prairie Vet, and Binky, one of our tiny bottle babies, is featured in the ongoing advertising for the program. If you haven't seen the show, you can watch online at animalplanet.ca (you must have a cable subscription to Animal Planet). New episodes can be seen Sundays at 8 pm CT, on Animal Planet.
2. Bottle babies: 69 of them, to be exact. Our bottle baby mammas are amazing, and, as far as we can tell, we are still running the only neo-natal kitten nursery in Canada.
3. 298 cats spayed or neutered. Not nearly as many as we had hoped to get done, but not too shabby.
4. 180 adoptions. 180 cats and kittens found loving forever homes last year.
The Bad
1. Severe money troubles. Over the course of the year revenue was down by over $100,000. That's 30% of our operating budget, and it made things extremely difficult all year long. December income, which should see us through to the end of February, barely covered December operating expenses. We started this year with no money in the bank.
2. 40% drop in adoptions. The reason for this is unclear, but we normally find homes for well over 300 cats and kittens per year. This year only 180 were placed.
3. 40% drop in spays and neuters. This is directly related to the drop in income -- no money means no way to pay for surgery. In a normal year, close to 500 cats are spayed or neutered through our programs. In 2017, we could only afford 298.
4. Almost 40% of donation pledges were not honoured. There are a number of reasons for this -- expired credit cards, cards temporarily over limit, bank or card hacking / fraud, change in circumstances, etc. Whatever the reason, those funds were sorely missed.
The Absolutely, Horrendously Atrocious
Brace yourself. This one is very bad. In 2017, Craig Street Cats was forced to turn away over 10,000 cats and kittens. That's an average of 28 cats each and every day of the year. Of course, some days we had no calls. Other days we had calls for over 100 cats. All of those 10,000 cats belonged in our programs. They were not surrendered pets or friendly cats needing rehoming. These were all community cats needing access to programs unique to CSC, and we could not help them.
We are carefully going over options for the future, but a couple of things are very clear:
1. there is desperate need for the programs CSC offers
2. money to fund those programs is getting harder to find
So, we're asking for your help. Please, come adopt cats. Come out to our events. If you've made a pledge, please confirm that you are honouring it. Foster cats or kittens. Donate money, food and / or supplies. Volunteer at the adoption centre. Doing any of these things will help keep programs going and will save lives.
Cupcakes for Kittens