Coulee Region Humane Society, Inc.: Bissell Rescue U Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

The money was used to build a play/exercise room for our cats.

Our shelter has one communal room where cats can move about freely. All our other cats live in kennels. They have not had a designated play area and have had to wait for our multipurpose cat-evaluation and adopter-get-acquainted room to be empty in order to stretch their legs, play, race around the room and cuddle with volunteers. Thanks to you we were able to build a playroom.

How many pets did this grant help?

This grant helps the 30 cats and kittens who are in our adoption room every day. We placed 577 cats in 2013, almost all of whom lived in our adoption room at some point.

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Our playroom just passed its final inspection today. The first cat in the room is our oldest cat, Bria, a 17-year-old, black domestic short hair. Bria is very much in need of the exercise and stress reduction afforded her by time in this playroom. This ability to play is serious business for our cats. Stress is a problem for shelter cats and stress leads to illness, most commonly upper-respiratory infections. The ability to play and socialize helps reduce stress and we think our cats will be healthier as a result. We have that crazy little thing called hope – hope that this playroom will, literally, save lives. In addition, staff can use this room for our cat personality assessment program, Meet Your Match.