They roam your house, use a litter box, are best kept indoors, should be spayed/neutered, and their homeless population has been exploding.
Sound familiar? Well, I’m not talking about cats, but rabbits.
Around September 2021, we declared our rabbit population a burgeoning crisis. Rabbits were coming to us in entire litters, easily cruising into the double digits. It was a bunny-palooza.
It’s that time of year when we start to see a rising number of kittens and momma cats who need our help. During the winter months, we were taking in somewhere between 150 and 200 cats each month. During the spring and summer months, this increases by more than 100 cats monthly.
In all the years I’ve worked for the Ottawa Humane Society, I haven’t seen an end to the different ways an animal might need our help.
A cat with a gunshot wound in his leg. A dog who had crawled into a car engine to escape the cold. A Guinea pig with ovarian cysts. Floods of homeless bunnies needing shelter, care and love. A momma cat who needed a C-section to save her life and the lives of her kittens.
Many hands make life-saving work at the Ottawa Humane Society possible. One of these essential groups is our amazing team of volunteers — close to 800 strong.
This past week, we celebrated National Volunteer Week, and we took the chance to showcase a few of the people who are a part of this selfless team.
I had the honour last week of meeting with shelters, advocates and people who care about animals from all over North America and even around the globe at the Humane Society of the United States’ Animal Expo.
We talked about the challenges we are facing as leaders in the humane movement. Ways that we can better serve our communities. And, of course, how we can do more for animals in need.
You may have heard the news earlier this month that Kiska, the world’s loneliest orca, died after 40 years in captivity.
The solace I take in Kiska’s death is that she is no longer suffering and the knowledge that no orca will ever endure a similar fate in Canada — Bill S-203 made sure of that even if it excluded Kiska and other animals already locked away behind Marineland’s walls.
Almost daily, we receive calls from struggling pet owners to ask if the OHS can provide veterinary care for their pet — often for a condition that earlier intervention might have prevented. Outside of our Mobile Spay/Neuter Service (MSNS) and microchip clinics, the answer has been no, but that’s changing.
This week, we piloted our first-ever Wellness Clinic and provided wellness exams, core vaccinations, microchips, and a few other basic veterinary services to nine cats and dogs whose families are not able to afford veterinary care. We talk to owners about how to keep their pets healthy and signs of illness to watch for.
On International Women’s Day, I think about all of the great women who have contributed to the animal welfare movement — fromJane Goodall of course, the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, to Dr. Lila Miller, the mother of shelter medicine. Many great female leaders have forged the path, to make our communities better places for the animals we share our world with, and we owe them a debt of gratitude.
Today, we celebrated World Spay Day. I had the honour of helping to provide spay/neuter surgeries to animals in the care of some of our local partners. Thanks to the incredible support from our community, at the OHS clinic, we spayed/neutered 34 cats, 3 dogs and 3 rabbits in need.
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