Cat rescuers launch ballot petition process

PALMER — A cat rescue group has applied for a ballot petition to a change Mat-Su Borough regulations regarding animal euthanasia.

“What the initiative does is make it to be law that if a rescue group requests to rescue an animal, then the shelter has to give the group that animal instead of euthanizing it unless it’s dangerous or sick and suffering,” said Judy Price with Clear Creek Cat Rescue.

The rescue group has submitted an application to the Mat-Su Borough clerk. The clerk has about a week to decide if the petition meets all legal requirements. After that, the group will start gathering signatures.

Price said the borough has a policy at its animal shelter pretty similar to the law proposed in the petition, but the policy isn’t always applied the same way and, in some cases, the shelter has put down cats the rescue group has asked to adopt.

She said the hope is that by formalizing the rule as law, the shelter will always send pets to rescue groups rather than euthanizing the animals.

Carol Vardeman, acting director of Animal Care and Regulation for the borough, said the petition was a surprise to her. The shelter has been working to improve relations with rescue groups and she said thought that effort was going well. For instance, she said, the shelter worked out a plan for what kind of fees to charge rescue groups. Until recently, the price groups paid varied depended in large part on which shelter staff member processed the adoption.

“I said, ‘I agree, it’s crummy, that it’s never the same price,’” Vardeman said.

She said she’d also been working to rewrite the shelter’s policies in dealing with rescue groups. She said rounded up some examples of policies from other communities to use as a starting point. That, she said, touched off kind of an Internet firestorm with discussions on Craigslist and Facebook.

“There was weeks where we were battling this Internet monster,” Vardeman said. “I kept saying, ‘It’s a draft! It’s a draft!’”

But, she said, the rescue groups, shelter volunteers and folks on a residents advisory board for the shelter all seemed happy with it.

“If all goes well, I’ll be able to implement it at the start of the year,” she said.

While the petition language seeks to draw a clear line between which animals can go out to rescue groups and which ones can be put down, Vardeman said it’s not always that simple because rescue groups and the borough sometimes have different definitions of what ailments means an animal is too sick to adopt.

As an example, she pointed to an upper respiratory disease that cats pass around when they get sick. The infection is a lifelong condition and lingers in homes where it has been present.

“If the foster family ever gets an upper respiratory infection cat they can’t adopt from us anymore,” Vardeman said.

During the dustup on the Internet regarding the shelter policies, Clear Creek at one point declared it would no longer work with the shelter, but later recanted. Price said it tried to stop working with the borough but there were still cats at the shelter that needed to be rescued.

Vardeman said that if numbers are any indication, the relationship between rescue groups and the shelter is healthy.

“We’ve rescued out 21 cats and five kittens this month,” she said Friday. “They’re still using us or we’re still using them.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.