When the Riverside County Department of Animal Services took in the highest number of cats out of anywhere in the country, only a little more than half of the animals left the shelter system alive.
Now, shelter operators are trying to flip the script on how people approach cats they think are strays. Because as it turns out, some of those cats weren’t actually strays, which meant the shelters were being clogged with what were essentially “catnapped” pets.
Jaclyn Schart, the deputy director for the Riverside County Department of Animal Services, said people have been told for years that if you see an animal outside alone, you should bring it to a shelter.
“So people did that, and unfortunately what happened is we were kidnapping people’s cats,” she said.
But fewer than 1% of the cats that end up in a shelter are reclaimed by their families, according to Schart. She noted that a lot of people were trying to be helpful by bringing them in, but that can quickly cause overcrowding.
Last June, the Riverside County Department of Animal Services had more than 600 cats across its four shelters, with more than 400 at the Western Riverside location alone.