Cool Cats Rescue: COVID-19 Operation Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
With the money we were awarded from the 2020 COVID-19 Operation Grant, we purchased vaccines, medications, and microchips for the animals in our group.
At the beginning of COVID, our state-funded shelters closed their doors to adoptions and intakes. As you can imagine, that put a lot of pressure on smaller organizations like our rescue to step up for the influx of owner-surrendered pets that had no place to go.
As if that wasn't bad enough, this hit at the start of Arizona's kitten season. At times, we were getting 60-70 requests a day and took in 200+ animals over a duration of three months, which was a lot for a small, foster-based rescue. The 2020 COVID-19 Operation Grant enabled us to offset our increased spending on microchips, vaccinations, and medications for cats, kittens, and dogs.
How many pets did this grant help?
45
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
On July 3, we received a call from our local sheriff’s department to pick up an aggressive senior rottweiler who was guarding the body of her deceased owner, who, we later discovered, had tested positive for COVID. Sunny (first photo) was 110 lbs., had cataracts in both eyes, was incontinent, and had issues with her hind quarters. With the uncertainty around COVID’s transmissibility, we had to take her directly from the house to be groomed. The COVID Operations Grant helped us to get her the meds she needed to overcome her incontinence, the first grooming she’d had in years, and food to help her lose weight, as she was roughly 35 lbs. overweight.
She was adopted into a family where she was loved in her final days. She had a seizure and is now deceased, but it was a wonderful reminder to us that not all adoption stories need to end in years of happiness. Sometimes, being there for a pet’s final moments is that much more impactful. It was a reminder to all of us that we have to let go of that which is not ours to keep forever.
