Somerset County has almost as many cats as people. Humane Society President Jack Mills said there are roughly 18,500 cats and about 25,000 people in the county. But caring for – and keeping that population in check – has been a real struggle.
They’re not alone. Humane societies across the state say they’re having trouble keeping the lights on and finding volunteers to pitch in.
The Somerset County Council recently awarded $20,000 in emergency funding to help keep the no-kill shelter running through next July. Without it, Mills said, the Humane Society likely would’ve closed in December.
“We just kind of explained to them, if they don’t help us, we’re going to have to be closing up,” he said.
Mills said the extra cash buys time, but not much else. The shelter runs on $8,000 to $10,000 a month, staffed almost entirely by volunteers and operating out of three small sheds out in the country.
Volunteering is hard work – cleaning cages, traps and carriers, changing out food, and making sure the facilities are safe and sterile for a cat population that’s constantly in flux as new cats and kittens come and go.
“Everything has changed in the last five or ten years,” Mills said. “People do not want to volunteer, they want money.”
Population problems
While Somerset County Animal Control only deals with dogs, the Humane Society exclusively handles cats. It’s been that way for at least the last decade. Part of the problem is that cats can have a litter of kittens two, sometimes even three, times a year.
“A cat at eight months old can start reproducing,” Mills said. “So, you see how it can get out of hand.”
To manage that, the shelter partners with low-cost veterinary nonprofits – some across the Bay Bridge, others as far away as Pennsylvania.
Mills and Humane Society Manager Wendy Ross are mostly an army of two in that endeavor. At least twice a month, they fill a van with as many as 25 nervous cats and kittens. They serve anywhere from 500 to 900 cats a year.
“The only time they really sing to you is if you’re going over a bridge,” Ross said. “After you’ve done it so long, you just don’t think about it … but I know they’re scared.”
Mills said the dangers of overpopulation go beyond mere nuisance.
“If you have an extreme overpopulation of cats, they can get rabies,” Mills said. “They’ll fight with raccoons, they’ll fight with foxes – and raccoons and foxes carry rabies.”
From there, rabies can spread to other animals, including other cats and even dogs.
Other issues, he said, are more about the humane treatment of the animals.
“You hardly ever see a dead cat in the road in Somerset County now,” Mills said. “It used to be, you couldn’t drive anywhere without seeing a dead cat somewhere. So what we’re eliminating is suffering.”
Inbreeding in large populations can cause health issues, and cats born from overcrowding often don’t get distemper shots and can die from complications.
“They get colds so bad their eyes swell up and they lose their eyesight,” Mills said. “They get blinded. There’s just a lot of suffering when you don’t control it.
“Many of these cats aren’t healthy. People have them, they can’t deal with them, so we end up with them,” he said.
Mills, who is 81, added, “I’m getting to the end of my rope with it, and I’m trying to find somebody to take it over. We need volunteers to help out. Money and volunteers are our biggest problem.”
Humane societies struggle statewide
Somerset County is not alone.
Jaime Limoges, executive director of the Humane Society of Carroll County, said her branch is “undergoing a time of systematic growth and expansion to keep up with the overwhelming demand.” She added, “We are constantly short-staffed.”
Like Somerset, they are committed to running a no-kill shelter.
“Our greatest challenge is one of space and efficiency,” Limoges said. “We’ve transformed a county-owned building – leased for just $1 per year and originally designed for animal disposal – into a lifesaving center that made 4,221 adoptions possible last year and reunited 3,154 lost pets with their families. Every inch of space has been maximized: closets became treatment rooms, offices became adoption areas, and even exterior walls were converted into interior spaces.”
And yet, that wasn’t enough. Limoges said they rely heavily on volunteer fosters “without whom we could not keep up with the demands of kitten season.”
Also like Somerset, their priority is running affordable spay-and-neuter clinics.
“We are also working to expand TNR (trap-neuter-return) support in the community,” Limoges said. “Currently, staff provide guidance as time allows to residents managing feral cats, and we hope to grow this effort through volunteers.”
The Carroll County shelter is also investing in new software to help streamline operations.
Patty Crankshaw-Quimby, executive director of Talbot Humane and president of Professional Animal Workers of Maryland, an organization of shelters and animal control authorities across the state, said her shelter is seeing similar trends.
She said they have “a robust team of volunteers” helping care for animals and run community programming, “however many of our volunteers have had to cut back or take a break due to the need to take on second jobs in the current economic climate.”
“We have found our Humane Community Program has helped keep pets from being surrendered to the shelter or abandoned on the streets in Talbot County,” she said. “We strive to keep pets with their people whenever possible by offering assistance from supplies to medical assistance and, of course, our high-volume spay-neuter program.”
Funding woes in Somerset
Part of the problem with funding is that support from donors becomes tougher when economic conditions are uncertain.
Mills said there are donation boxes in the county, but Somerset residents don’t have a lot of extra money to give. “And if you have a fundraiser, you don’t get very much. It almost costs as much to have a fundraiser as you get from it,” he said.
Because of financial hardships, spay-and-neuter clinics are run on a pay-what-you-can basis.
“We don’t try to embarrass people,” Mills said. “We say, ‘If you could donate $60, that would help us.’ Some people will say they can’t really do that. Our mission and our goal is to take the cat, because we want it spayed.”
The Humane Society also runs a pet food bank for residents who can’t afford food for their animals.
“People get these animals, they get sick, they don’t have money to take them to the vet,” he said. “Some people go without to feed their animals.”
Inside the shelter, cats are allowed to roam freely after a short quarantine. “That means they don’t have to live in a cage,” Mills said.
Altogether, it’s a busy operation, run by a handful of people with little funding and fewer volunteers each year.
“We’re hustling 24-7,” Mills said. “We don’t plug our doors, we don’t turn off our phones. If you call our hotline, somebody will call you back.”
How to help:
To help the Somerset County Humane Society, visit humanesocietyofsomersetcounty.org.
To help the Carroll County Humane Society, email volunteerhssc@gmail.com or visit hscarroll.org.
To help Talbot Humane, visit talbothumane.org.
Have a news tip? Contact Eastern Shore bureau chief Josh Davis at jdavis@baltsun.com or on X as @JoshDavis4Shore.
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