-
Volunteer Services for Animals, Warwick Chapter Needs YOUR help!
Below you will see articles from the Providence Journal. We are asking you to open up your hearts to help the 43 cats and kittens (at last count) that were living in this condo where the conditions were deplorable. They are now in VSA foster care. The VSA needs donations to help these beautiful cats. It will cost the VSA over $4,000 to foster them, including spay/neuter, shots, health tests, medicine and food.
If you would like to send a donation, please send check or money order (condo cats in memo) to:
VSA - Warwick Chapter
788 Reservoir Ave
PMB #269
Cranston, RI 02910
--$10.00 will feed one of these cats for one week
--$20.00 rabies shot for one cat
--$35.00 will neuter one male cat
--$50.00 will spay one female cat
Please help if you can!
From the Providence Journal:
04-23-2000 - Police find squalor inside condo in Warwick
Animal control officers removed 25 cats and 2 dogs from a Condo on Saturday, April 22, 2000 and discovered that they had missed at least four other cats.
"We got a call from someone who went by and saw them looking out the front window," Mayor Scott Avedisian said.
Animal control officers who removed the dogs and cats from the condo described the conditions there as deplorable. Feces was in every room, they said, and trash covered the floors. Several cats and kittens were found dead.
The Animal control officers descriped the conditions inside as the worst they've ever seen. The officers said that they had to buy respirators and full-body suites typically used for painting before they could go in.
Still, even with that equipment, the officers could work inside at only 10-minute intervals because of the smell. Fleas and other insects covered the home, and the officers said they saw what appeared to be human feces on the floor in addition to animal waste.
"It was definitely squalor", said Richard Gallant, one of the officers. "They were living in squalor. There was not a room in the house that didn't have feces".
The animals were taken to the Warwick Animal Shelter and were being cleaned up. The city's Building Department has condemned the residence. Some of the cats appeared to be suffering from respiratory illness, and the dogs looked sickly, Gallant said.
4-25-00
Officers went back into the home and found another four cats. They estimated that at least a dozen more are still inside, said Christa Starkey-Mason, a board member for the Volunteer Services for Animals, a group that assists the Warwick Animal Shelter.
So far, officers have found 29 cats and two cocker spaniels, not including the cats they haven't removed.
"The animal control officers opened the door and left it open and the cats wouldn't come out" even while trying to escape capture, he said. "You would think as they were running around they would see the light and fresh air and come out, but they stayed."
While removing the live animals, animal control officers also discovered the remains of 2 adult cats and what could have been 1 or more kittens. As of yesterday, VSA has found temporary homes for 24 of the adult cats.
Christa Starkey-Mason said veterinarians at Warwick Animal Hospital had operated on one of the cats after it was found to have 2 dead kittens in it's uterus.
Starkey-Mason said all but two of the cats are staying at foster homes. The two dogs and the remaining 2 cats are living at the Warwick Animal Shelter. Most of the animals were in poor physical condition, she added.
"There's so many hiding places, so many nooks and crannies," she siad. The floor of the condo was so covered in trash and depris that the "animal control officers were worried about stepping on cats and kittens", she said.
Contact VSA at warwickvsa@cs.com
or fixitthecat@cs.com for more info.
Back to JJ Cat Castle
Nancy's Web Page Design
