2023

 

Dear Fellow Animal Lover,

      These have been a tough several years. We continue to face so many obstacles. Because of the tightened economy, donations and local and national grants have dropped off significantly making funding our biggest and most pressing challenge.

      Followed by funding are staffing shortages that hamper transports, adoptions, public intakes, and municipal shelter transfers.

      And a new challenge this year – our volunteer base is down. We had an extremly difficult time finding enough volunteers to hold our biggest fundraisers of the year – our bi-annual rummage sales.

      Veterinarian shortages continue to stall critical spay/neuter procedures resulting in person after person requesting help for litter after unwanted litter making it impossible for us to help everyone who calls.              Lack of available surgery slots also slows our ability to get dogs and cats ready for adoption as quickly as we’d like, causing a longer length of stay for adoptable pets and in turn slowing down intakes and transfers.

      We work tirelessly to stop overpopulation at its source: unaltered, breeding dogs and cats! We continue to offer a Mobile SPCA-funded $10 off coupon for spay/neuter surgeries and work with our veterinarian partners to offer deserving families lower cost surgeries. The requests for our $10 off coupon have tripled this year and we expect an even greater demand in next year. Your donations help us fund this extremely important program.

      Because of our $10 off coupon, a targeted spay/neuter grant from Dogs Trust and your generosity we have assisted in altering 2,457 cats and dogs this year.

      While we have faced many challenges during these last several years the senior staff has stepped up and pitched in to do everything needed to keep the organization continue to move forward.

      We search for new and creative ways to face a plethora of challenges that arise every day. For example, we load up a van of cats and dogs and drive them to the spay/neuter clinic in Mississippi twice a month. Our extra effort has prevented the birth of thousands of unwanted kittens and puppies in Mobile County.

      Rising veterinary costs have affected our bottom line and decreased some owners’ ability to care for their pets. Because of this we have had a spike in animals in need of emergency care – heart-stopping painful cases of badly suffering animals in desperate need of expensive, emergency surgeries like eye removal, amputations, bladder stone surgery as well as entropion surgery, tumor removal and other unusual conditions. And the number of senior pets whose owners have died, gone into assisted living or just can’t afford to care for a geriatric pet has sky-rocketed. Almost all of them needing dental care! Then we begin the difficult task of finding old dogs and old cats new homes . . .

      Because of the lack of funding critical repairs have gone undone. We have projects that we cannot put off any longer – roof repairs, black mold removal, repairs to the cat rooms, fence repairs, something seems to break or fall apart and needs to be replaced or repaired daily!

      We keep administrative costs to a minimum which allows us to spend 82 cents of every dollar on the animals in our care. Our funding comes from the generosity of people like you from your donations, bequests and support of our many annual fundraisers.

      We receive no government funding, operating solely on donations, grants and fundraising. We are not a branch of the ASPCA, HSUS or any other national organization and receive no financial assistance from them for day-to-day expenses.

      We cannot accomplish our life-saving work or continue our mission — to provide shelter, food, and medical care to the animals entrusted to us, promote adoptions and transport, assist with spay and neuter and educate people on responsible pet ownership — without your help.

      If you can donate financially, please do; if you can donate your time, our staff would be very appreciative. And if you can find a place in your heart and home to adopt or foster a pet, their love and devotion will be worth more than words can describe.

      Please donate today so we can continue to save even more lives next year. Your gift is tax deductible and will help us give our community’s homeless animals a start on a new life in a loving home. Please know we sincerely appreciate your donation. Thank you!