Animal shelters in Orange, Volusia and Brevard counties are offering special promotions right now, like reduced adoption fees, to help find homes for an overflow of pets in their care.
Kitten season, the time of year when cats give birth to litters of four to six kittens, and confiscations of sometimes hundreds of animals at a time from puppy mills and overcrowding situations, have caused the overflow throughout Central Florida shelters.
With this in mind, Orange County Health Services’ Zach Downes said Orange County Animals Services is urging people to think twice before surrendering an animal, especially if they find a litter of kittens, which seem abandoned, but in reality might not be.
“You might come across the litter of kittens under a tree in your backyard and they look abandoned but the mom is out hunting for food, then people just bring them to the shelter,” said Downes. “Unfortunately, depending on how old the kitten is, they can't stay in our shelter. Because they're not old enough to but they need special care.”
Downes said people should also wait a few days before they surrender stray dogs. He said a simple post on community Facebook forums might help reunite a pup with its owner, and save it the trip to a shelter.
Because of the overflow of animals that have been surrendered at the shelter, staff are urgently looking for adoptive and foster parents, said Downes. The shelter has almost 400 animals in its care as of the first day of August.
“The shelter is crowded, it's noisy, it's unfamiliar to these animals. And, it can be a little traumatizing to an animal, depending on their situation, their behavioral needs. That's why we really encourage adoption,” said Downes. “But we also encourage people to step forward and foster, which means they can go through a training class with us. And we'll provide them with all the correct materials that they need to be a successful foster parent.”
To encourage adoption in Orange County, pets that have been at the shelter for more than four weeks will have a reduced adoption fee of $10. Fees are waived for any Orange County School District employee.
Volusia and Brevard County animal shelters are also looking for homes for an overflow of pets.
Shelters across the United States started running into problems finding pets homes during COVID, when families surrendered their pets during the economic uncertainty that followed the emergence of the virus. Years of high inflation only made the problem worse.
View adoptable pets at Orange County Animal Services, Halifax Humane Society, and Brevard Humane Society.
