Katie's Place Proposal to Maple Ridge for Use of Municipal Property

KATIE'S PLACE PROPOSAL - SYNOPSIS

Katie's Place, incorporated November 2004, has sheltered animals in Maple Ridge since 2001. The shelter provides many services to the community, including:

• offering pets for adoption;
• accepting homeless and unwanted animals;
• trapping feral cats;
• providing public education.

The volunteers and Board of Directors of Katie's Place are ready and able to continue addressing the needs of Maple Ridge's companion animals. To do so with maximum efficacy, we would like to request assistance from City Hall in obtaining property for Katie's Place's use.
 

BACKGROUND

Katie's Place is a nonprofit, volunteer-run small-animal shelter which has rescued animals in Maple Ridge since January 2001. In autumn 2004 the management of the shelter was assumed by a group of senior volunteers. Katie's Place became a registered charity in April 2005, the group of senior volunteers serving as its board of directors.

We specialize in small animals that have nowhere else to go. We provide lifelong sanctuary to those who are not adopted, and we alter and return/relocate ferals where the property owner is willing to provide for them. Every cat and kitten is altered before it leaves our care, either to return to its family or as a new adoption.

The shelter is located in a converted barn, the use of which has been lent to Katie's Place by the owners. At Katie's Place's inception, its founder intended to house up to two dozen cats in one room at the barn. However, the need for our service turned out to be so great that over the years the entire barn was converted to shelter use.

To date, Katie's Place has rescued nearly thirteen hundred animals and has adopted out nearly nine hundred. Approximately one hundred cats and rabbits are currently at the shelter and approximately fifty are in foster care. Over the years, approximately one hundred have succumbed to age-related deaths or to illness. The remainder were returned to their homes or trapped, altered and returned to feral colonies. Volunteers put in more than 20,000 hours a year on essential tasks such as cleaning, feeding, transporting animals, liaising with the public, and fund raising -- the equivalent of 10 to 11 full time positions.
 

KATIE'S PLACE'S STANDING IN THE COMMUNITY

The high demand for space at our shelter led us to establish criteria for admission. We take last-chance animals and direct people to take their highly adoptable animals to SPCA shelters. If an animal at the local SPCA shelter proves to be unadoptable within the time and space they can offer, then we take the animal from them. Katie's Place has worked closely with the local SPCA shelter and has also boarded small animals for them at no cost when they are unable to provide for them temporarily.

Katie's Place has become a highly organized community institution which enjoys a sterling reputation and provides valued service. Evidence of our value is not only the high demand for our assistance but also the increasing number of donors who support us. In the 2004 calendar year, Katie's Place received $53,665 in donations and made a further $18,000 in adoption fees. This, together with fund raisers, provides the capital that allowed for expansion and has successfully supported the shelter.
 

OUR CONTRIBUTION TO THE COMMUNITY

We provide these services to the community:

• sheltering unwanted companion animals;
• offering animals for adoption;
• trapping, altering and returning/relocating feral cats for property owners;
• lending traps and support in altering and placing trapped cats;
• sheltering cats with FIV or Feline Leukemia (a rare service in Rescue)
• sheltering SPCA cats whose needs exceed what they can provide
• advising the public on animal problems;
• speaking at functions or providing a display at events;
• offering volunteer opportunities for animal lovers;
• involving marginalized members of the community at the shelter (children, the elderly, physically or mentally challenged citizens, residents from local correctional facility);
• boarding animals.

THE NEED WE FILL

The depth of our involvement with the community sets Katie's Place apart. We have gone to people's homes to set up traps or to pick up or deliver animals. We have made ourselves available day and night. Our volunteers have checked traps at 6:00 a.m., taken animals to the vet at 11:00 p.m., and bottle-fed tiny orphans every two hours around the clock.

There is no textbook situation to which textbook responses can be applied in people/animal issues. The variety is infinite. We are responsive to the needs of each situation without being bound by policies and procedures that may not fit. Over the years we have developed our operation such that the volunteers are in synch in their tasks. Different volunteers are responsible for different areas, for example, veterinarian liaison or admissions. If the volunteer handling the phone gets a call at 10:00 p.m. requiring immediate action, she does what is needed, knowing the other volunteers will fall in, doing their jobs at her call.

We respond to each situation with regard to its unique circumstances, guided by our cumulative experience. The fact that each volunteer is working purely for the love of the job assures that every effort is made on every problem. We don't clock in or out. When we're needed, we work. Our single goal is to resolve each situation in the best interests of the animal and the people who care about it.
 

THE FUTURE OF KATIE'S PLACE

Katie's Place has proven its viability as a necessary and permanent institution. Our problem now is that we are still dependent on the use of the barn which was lent to us. Development around the shelter has proceeded at a rapid pace, changing the face of the area. In September the property beside the shelter was listed for sale. The owners of the barn could decide to sell at any time. That event would most likely mean the end of our tenancy. Our group of approximately 40 volunteers would be left without a shelter to house the 100 animals on site at any given time. Katie's Place has reached the point where it needs a more permanent location.

We are saving for a new facility. We have been named as a beneficiary in donors' wills and will eventually receive monies that will help obtain property. In the meantime, we need the use of a piece of property with buildings and space for volunteers and visitors to park.

A slight increase in traffic to and from the shelter would be the only change a neighbour might notice. The shelter is completely inconspicuous in all other respects. Our animals are confined to the shelter and create no noise, odour nor eyesore.
 

OUR REQUEST

Having only a barn and an outdoor cold water pump to work with, Katie's Place has earned an excellent reputation in the rescue community throughout the province for its standard of care. We could operate even more effectively with indoor plumbing and hot running water.

Our volunteers are resourceful enough to make a shelter out of any sturdy building. Thus we are respectfully asking the Mayor and Council to follow the example of the Township of Langley which arranged for the use of property for CARES, a Langley-based volunteer-run cat shelter. We are respectfully requesting the use of City-owned property for Maple Ridge's Katie's Place.

The citizens of Maple Ridge have demonstrated that companion animals are dear to their hearts. We know the community would support this initiative. Maple Ridge would be recognized as a community with a progressive attitude toward the issues of companion animals. Our goal is to alter every cat in Maple Ridge that has been abandoned to reproduce. With the future of Katie's Place assured, the volunteers would be able to continue addressing the problem of feral and unaltered cats that plague suburban neighbourhoods and rural areas alike.

We are not seeking funding; our supporters have met the needs of our operation with donations. We seek only a place to house our animals.
 

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