The Animal Center: A Shelter Without Walls

By Kaaren Valenta

When Monica Roberto moved to Newtown with her husband Mark Alexander six years ago, their family included her dog, Bailey, a 4-year-old lab. Mark, however, wanted a cat.

“Mark was a big cat guy, and when I said one cat was okay, he said we needed two so they would be company for each other. He said ‘Trust me,’” she recalled. “But one by one, cats started coming out of the woodwork.”

First there was the cat that apparently was abandoned by the previous owner of the house. Then a stray was found near the Big Y supermarket. Ms Roberto then found a litter of five kittens abandoned on the property that bordered theirs.

Ultimately nine cats made their way into the couple’s household.

“We would have been happy with two but they just kept coming,” Ms Roberto said.

She had been volunteering with Canine Advocates to walk dogs at the Newtown pound, but when she left her job at a publishing company in Norwalk, she knew she wanted to do something to help with the cat problem, too, so she began to volunteer at Danbury Animal Welfare, an organization that rescues both dogs and cats.

There she met another volunteer, Kim Coleman of New Fairfield, who had left a corporate job in reinsurance to spend more time with her three teenagers, but who also wanted to rescue cats.

“All of the surrounding towns have cat rescue organizations but there is none in Newtown,” Ms Roberto said. “We wanted to do something here. I said let’s focus on the unmet needs of our community. Animal homelessness is a problem created by people, so people need to take action to solve the problem.”

The two women formed a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, The Animal Center, Inc, last December to help animals.

“Our goal is to help end companion animal homelessness and prevent animal cruelty in Newtown and the broader Connecticut community,” Ms Coleman said. “This mission is driven by the belief that compassion, respect and kindness to people, animals, and the natural environment help build a better world for all of us.”

A Shelter Without Walls

The organization is looking for cash donations and also donations of food, nonclumping cat litter, old towels and sheets, and foster homes.

“We are all volunteers,” Ms Roberto said. “Our major expenses are veterinary bills. The vets are working at reduced rate for us. Before placing kittens and cats we have them spayed or neutered, tested for feline AIDS and leukemia, and give them all the vaccines. The $75 adoption fee helps to cover this.”

Calling themselves “a shelter without walls,” the two women are looking for residents who will provide foster care for cats and kittens until they can be adopted.

“Kittens need to stay together until they are 8 to 12 weeks old. That is a critical socializing time,” Ms Roberto said. “They need to learn to interact and to know what it is like to hurt. If they are adopted earlier, they can get nippy because they haven’t learned this lesson. That’s what the vets say.”

The first program developed by The Animal Center is Operation FELIX (Feline Education and Love Instead of Extermination), which gets stray cats and kittens off the street through humane rescue, care and adoption services.

With the help of local veterinarians, Operation FELIX provides much needed medical care to stray and abandoned cats, including spay/neuter surgeries. These cats and kittens are then placed into volunteer foster homes where they receive one-on-one love and attention in a safe and humane environment until adoption.

Since unowned cats may represent the single most important source of cat overpopulation in Connecticut, Operation FELIX is working locally to reduce the numbers of feral cats through a trap, release, and colony management strategy called Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), which is widely recognized as the most effective and humane way of reducing feral cat populations.

The group is also in the course of developing the following programs:

Bridge Partners, which is a foster care program that will help people who are experiencing a temporary but significant hardship in their lives and need short-term housing for their animals until they can get back on their feet.

Good Neighbors Program, which combines grassroots power with the internet to help families reunite with a lost companion animal .

HEART (Humane Education And Responsible Training), which will provide education, training, and counseling to help ensure that companion animals stay in homes after they’re adopted.

The Animal Center has assembled a Board of Advisors that includes Matthew Buck, a vet who practices at the Cat Clinic in Danbury and Middle Quarter in Woodbury; Tracy Cardarelli of Greenwich, a member of the board of the Animal Welfare Federation of Connecticut, of which the Center is an active member; Karlyn Sturmer of Newtown, a local feral cat expert and cat trapper; and Marjorie Cramer, MD, of Newtown, a physician with an extensive background in animal welfare. Dr Cramer was a member of the Committee on Legal Issues Pertaining to Animals, Association of the Bar of the City of New York 1998–2002; vice president of NEAVS, Boston 1999–2002; past board member of the Medical Research Modernization Committee; and past advisory board member of several animal welfare organizations.

The Animal Center has already done a mailing to local residents asking for donations. And every Saturday in June from noon to 3 pm, the center will be at Paws on Main on Route 25 in Monroe, next to Senior Ponchos restaurant, for adoption days.

“We are animal lovers. We don’t like the other options,” Ms Roberto said. “We are working together to find solutions. We’re going to make it happen.”

Anyone who is interested in donating, volunteering, or partnership opportunities can contact the center by emailing info@theanimalcenter.org or calling Monica Roberto at 313-4814. Some of the kittens that are available can be viewed on the website www.theanimalcenter.org.