Barn cat program looking for homes

By MorinvilleNews.com Staff

Morinville – There’s plenty of purring and meowing going on at the Morinville Veterinary Clinic these days. The animal housing division currently has 10 cats looking for new homes, but these animals are looking for a little room to roam.

“The barn / shop cat program is a program where we find homes for cats that are unable to fit into the norm of household pet,” said Susan Stacey who runs the program for the clinic. “They are quite happy outside or quite happy on their own, and so therefore we need a shop or a barn.”

Companies or people with barns that need a mouser are ideal candidates for the program as well as people who own shops that want to have a feline companion around the premises. However, it is important that people looking to adopt the cats are outside of Morinville as the town has a cat bylaw in effect that does not permit roaming cats.

But determining what cats are indoor and outdoor cats is not something left to guess work.

“They all have to go through an assessment to see if that’s the way they’re going to end up being,” Stacey said of the barn / shop cats, adding some of the animals are not fond of other cats, while others simply prefer to be outdoors. “They’re not necessarily feral cats; they’re often cats who’ve been out on their own for a period of time. They’re not wild, they just prefer the outside.”

The clinic waves the normal adoption fee for barn / shop cats in favour of a donation to the clinic’s stray cat program. Although there is no adoption fee, all cats in the program have been spayed or neutered as well as de-wormed, vaccinated and micro-chipped just like other animals up for more conventional adoption.

Stacey said anyone interested in taking on a barn / shop cat need only call the Morinville Veterinary clinic at 780-939-3133 and come in to see which cat they would like.

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