Catfight: Shelter, rescue groups at odds

PALMER — Cat rescue groups and the Mat-Su Borough Animal Care and Regulation Shelter recently found themselves fighting over the way 22 kittens were sent out for adoption.

Just before Christmas, the kittens were given to Fairbanks to Loving Companions Inc.

Carol Vardeman, director of the shelter, said that at the time there were 120 cats in the borough shelter. She called Loving Companions in an attempt, actually, to update her contact lists. That conversation led to the group taking 22 cats, which relieved a lot of pressure on the shelter.

“Everybody was smiling and then all of a sudden, ‘Bam!’ everyone was mad at me,” Vardeman said.

What happened in between?

Local rescue groups caught wind that Loving Companions had been given the animals for free and was selling them in Fairbanks with their genitals intact. Rescue groups in Fairbanks wrote to say that the director of that group was an animal hoarder with numerous anonymous complaints against her at the Fairbanks shelter.

Since then, the borough’s deputy manager, George Hays, has stepped in.

“Those issues were brought to our attention, we explored those, and we have discovered that the concerns that were brought forward were accurate, and so we have terminated our relationship with that organization and are reviewing our policies to see how we can prevent that type of activity from recurring,” borough manager John Moosey said at Tuesday’s borough assembly meeting.

Borough assemblyman Steve Colligan asked if the borough would put a local-rescue-group-first policy in place.

“We have a policy normally where we try to contact the local ones,” Hays said.

He said he also made sure that out-of-borough groups would have to pay the same fees local groups do to take animals. Instead of as happened in this case where the cats were sent to Fairbanks free of charge. Vardeman said she does that sometimes as a courtesy for groups that are traveling a long way to pick up animals.

Rhonda Weinrick, who owns the AKCat rescue group, said she thinks those solutions have only partially fixed the problem and that the shelter has had a prickly relationship with rescue groups.

“We don’t go there to be adversaries with anyone, it’s just they turn it into that,” she said.

It’s almost enough to make her want to throw up her hands and be done with the borough. But if the shelter called tomorrow to say it had a litter of 2-day-old kittens, she’d go get them. Not everyone can bottle-feed a cat, she said.

“You put your foot down and the only one you’re hurting is the animals,” Weinrick said.

She pointed out that in this instance, the borough missed out on hundreds, possibly thousands, of dollars in fees. Which, she said, gets to part of the problem. There’s a perception that since rescue groups take in kittens and can get them adopted out quickly they’re profiting off of their re-homing fees.

“Last year I lost almost $6,000, and that was my best year,” Weinrick said.

She said that letting unaltered animals — those not spayed or neutered — out of the shelter is a big no-no as it is likely to contribute to animal overpopulation.

For her part, Vardeman said the animals were too small to be spayed or neutered. She said people she has talked to about Loving Companions have said the group is very good about keeping track of spay-neuter vouchers and tracking down animals that are adopted out and whose owners don’t redeem them.

Regardless, part of the policy change in the wake of this fight has been a ban on unaltered animals leaving the shelter, she said.

But Vardeman also said the borough’s severing of its relationship with Loving Companions might be a temporary change. She’s continuing to investigate the group. She said that there are plenty of complaints against it, but there hasn’t been any kind of animal seizures or criminal charges. Those complaints are mostly anonymous, and a lot of people also say good things about the group and its founder.

“The people I’ve talked to can’t say enough good things about this woman,” Vardeman said. “She’s writing grants all the time, so she’s got lots of money to keep a clean place.”

She said the allegation appears to be that she is an animal hoarder. The term “hoarder” has become something of a bad word in recent years, due in no small part to television shows involving squalid houses packed with garbage.

“The veterinarian she works with says, ‘sure, she’s a hoarder. I wouldn’t want to live with that many animals, but it’s always clean,’” Vardeman said.

She said the group appears to be extreme in its philosophy of not wanting to ever put an animal down.

“If a dog is diabetic, she’s going to give that dog insulin until he dies in his sleep or of old age,” Vardeman said. “Some people thing that’s cruel and some people think it’s heroic.”

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