A few weeks ago, the staff members at Safe Haven Humane Society were in the midst of a busy day when some people holding a giant crate full of cats showed up in their lobby. The unexpected visitors said that they’d come across the cats while shopping
at Home Depot and brought them straight to the shelter to get help.
“Our front office gave me a call and was like, ‘Hey, I really need some help. These people just showed up [with] an unknown amount of cats in their car in crates,’” Katie Storm, marketing and development specialist at Safe Haven Humane Society, told The Dodo.
The people who brought in the cats explained that they’d spotted two crates taped together outside the Home Depot with nobody near them. They’d waited nearby for a while to see if anyone would come claim the cats, but no one did.
“Nobody in the area could tell them where [the cats] came from, and they didn’t know what to do at that point,” Storm said. “So they took them and drove over to us.”
Safe Haven Humane Society typically works with an appointment-based system, but the staff members knew the cats needed help right away and decided to make an exception.
“We were all kind of at our max, but our executive director went out and talked to them and could tell they didn’t know what to do at this point,” Storm said.
The people who’d found the cats hadn’t opened the taped-up crates at all out of fear that the kitties would escape, so no one had any idea how many animals were actually inside. So everyone was taken aback when they discovered that there were 15 cats inside.
“One crate held four adult cats, two of whom were heavily pregnant,” Safe Haven Humane Society wrote on Instagram. “The second, much smaller crate contained two more adults and nine kittens.”
The humane society staff got to work right away getting all of the kitties the immediate medical care they needed as well as lots of food. For the first night they spent in the shelter, they kept all of the kitties together to avoid any unnecessary stress.
“By the morning, everybody was more relaxed, happy,” Storm said.
The staff decided to name all 15 of the cats after Disney movie characters, because, as the humane society wrote on Instagram, “after everything they’ve been through, they all deserve a happily-ever-after.”
For all of these kitties, their happily-ever-afters have already come or are just around the corner. All nine babies as well as the four kittenless adults, Alice, Bo Peep, Jasmine and Aurora, were adopted after just two weeks. The pregnant mamas, Alana and Flora, gave birth to healthy kittens in foster homes, and all of them will be available for adoption in August.
“[The kittens] are starting to get cute and chunky,” Storm said.
Storm and everyone else at the humane society are overjoyed that they were able to rescue all 15 cats and offer them loving homes.
“[T]o know that they probably would have been stuck in a cycle of having kittens over and over if nobody found them is heartbreaking for us,” Storm said. “So we’re happy that they get to be happy and in homes and loved.”
