More and more pets are being abandoned at pet shelters around Calgary in acts that could face legal consequences.
Monday morning around 8 am, a cat was found outside the door of the Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society (AARCS) facility in a crate with food and water.
“It’s not very often that that happens here, thankfully. So it’s always a bit of a surprise,” said AARCS stakeholder relations manager Rachel Cote.
CCTV video showed a man dropping off the cat at around 11:15 pm on Sunday night.
Video footage also shows a man opening the door to the AARCS Edmonton location and throwing a cat inside the foyer on Saturday.
Cote said while AARCS isn’t an open-intake facility, they have seen a tripling of demand of their by-appointment services in recent years.
“In 2019, we had approximately 275 requests for dogs. In 2023 we have over 900, so a pretty significant increase. And unfortunately, we can’t help them all,” she said.
“We are accepting animals right now.
“We do have the space and we have been kind of making space where we need it, but we’re also stretched pretty, pretty thin.”
The Calgary Humane Society hasn’t been untouched by abandonments, with a cat left under a litter box with a rock on top just last week.
It is also under high demand right now, to the point of having a wait list for their open admission services.
“I’ve never seen levels like this (for) demand. It’s unsustainable,” Brad Nichols, the Humane Society’s director of operations and enforcement, said.
“Shelters across Canada are seeing huge demand on their services… For what reason? I couldn’t tell you for absolutely certain. But it does seem to be an excess of animals that are unable to be kept by their owners.”
Abandoning an animal can be prosecuted under the Animal Protection Act and Criminal Code, with fines up to $20,000, a lifetime ban on owning animals and the possibility of jail time.
“Our abandonment numbers on investigations are up significantly — I think it’s about 10 per cent year over year. So we’ll typically see it’s just over 100 a year,” Nichols said.
Both Cote and Nichols said affordability is likely driving the abandonments. But there could be other reasons.
“I think it’s really just trying to figure out what that person was thinking ultimately and kind of what’s going on in their life that makes them get to that point,” Cote said.
Nichols suggests taking the “lengthy” commitment of owning a pet seriously before taking the plunge.
“Abandonment is not an alternative to surrender.”
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