CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Kanawha Charleston Humane Association says with close to 500 animals currently in their care, they need help with the additional influx of puppies and kittens they typically expect to see come in this time of year.

“We’re approaching what the animal welfare world calls puppy and kitten season, it’s just where you see an influx of new faces into the shelter, lots of puppies, lots of mama dogs, lots of kittens, lots of mama cats,” said Community Engagement Manager for the Kanawha Charleston Humane Association Angie Gillenwater.

Gillenwater said the number of animals they currently stand at now is nearly twice the amount their shelter is designed for.

In addition to that, she said they are also having to deal with the loss of one of their main veterinarians at the Fix Charleston Clinic beside the shelter, who is moving to another veterinarian job elsewhere.

Gillenwater said that’s forcing them to scale back services at the clinic such as their spay and neuter program as it’s now all in the hands of one veterinarian.

“She is moving on to a different job, which has resulted in us being short one veterinarian and leaving us with our chief veterinarian Dr. Bay who is putting her pedal to the medal at this point with spay and neuter and just any type of medical cases that we also see,” she said.

She said this will create a delay in the spay and neuter and other services they can provide, and typically at their shelter, they prefer to keep animals for spay and neuter before sending them home to their adopters, so that is also going to result in some additional over-crowding as they work to chip away at the spay and neuter waitlist.

However, Gillenwater said they have been at excess capacity for sometime now and have learned how to roll with the punches in the best way they can. 

“We’ve co-housed a lot of our pets, any pets that can live safely together, we’ve done that, we’ve done our usual turning offices and bathrooms into kennels, and something that’s been our saving grace throughout all of this is our foster parents,” she said.

To help cope with the influx of animals, the shelter will host an adoption event from May 1-15 where adoption prices will be just $20, while typically, fees range from $50 t0 $350 for dogs and $38 to $100 for cats.

But even if you can’t fully commit and actually adopt, Gillenwater said that fostering a dog or a cat for as little or as long as you can helps them out tremendously.

“All of that helps us, I don’t want to say gives us a break, but I mean, it does help us when it comes to cleaning in the mornings and providing enrichment, supplies, and veterinary care for everybody,” Gillenwater said.

You can learn more at [email protected].