Homeless after Superstorm Sandy, some pets may be displaced again

A shelter housing pets displaced by Superstorm Sandy is scheduled to close, with about half of the animals still unclaimed. The ASPCA will try to find foster homes for the animals, but their future remains uncertain.

|
Bebeto Matthews/AP
Anita Edson, (l.), checks on a shelter cat on Nov. 17, at an emergency boarding facility in the Brooklyn borough of New York. A temporary facility to house animals displaced by Superstorm Sandy will be closed this month, leaving 280 pets with an uncertain future.

The New York City shelter housing 280 pets displaced by Superstorm Sandy must shut down and, with nearly half the animals still unclaimed, cannot rule out euthanizing any left behind.

An uncertain future lies ahead for 52 cats and 84 dogs who remain in the Brooklyn emergency boarding facility run by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, spokeswoman Kelly Krause said on Thursday.

They are among 280 pets sheltered since November, after the New York City area was devastated by the late October storm.

The facility was originally scheduled to close on Dec. 17, but the volume of unclaimed pets prompted the ASPCA to extend its deadline into January.

What will happen to those pets whose owners fail to return is unclear. The ASPCA is looking into placing the unclaimed pets in foster homes or shelters if their owners are unreachable or unable to take them back, although no hard deadline has been given to owners, said Krause.

Following Hurricane Katrina, many similarly unclaimed pets were put up for adoption and placed in caring homes, only to have their owners surface months later and seek to get them back.

"We are still caring for the displaced pets at our emergency boarding facility, but we're also planning the next step, which is to find homes for unclaimed animals as we start to demobilize our operation," Tim Rickey, senior director of ASPCA Field Investigations and Response, said in a statement.

Most of the owners that the ASPCA has identified live in temporary housing or with family and friends, environments that prevent them from bringing their animals home, Krause said. A majority of the owners who had yet to claim their pets lived in the hard-hit Rockaways neighborhood in Queens.

Many pit bulls and mastiffs, dogs that shelters typically find hard to place given their vicious reputations, were among the unclaimed canines.

It was too early to say whether any of the pets that remain left behind would be put down, Krause said.

Reporting by Peter Rudegeair; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Sandra Maler

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Homeless after Superstorm Sandy, some pets may be displaced again
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0103/Homeless-after-Superstorm-Sandy-some-pets-may-be-displaced-again
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe