Nearly three dozen cats and kittens from the Stockton Animal Shelter were transported to the San Diego Humane Society this week — the second group transferred between the cities in the past three months.
The 34 felines were moved to San Diego to assist the Stockton shelter after months of animal overcrowding and an outbreak of a respiratory viruses that closed the facility for a number of weeks.
The San Diego Humane Society said that while it is still well over-capacity for dogs, it is able to take in cats — which, in turn, helps the Stockton shelter.
“Stockton Animal Care deserves credit for putting out the call for help,” San Diego Humane Society’s president and chief executive officer, Gary Weitzman, said in a statement. “When a fellow shelter needs support, whether here in San Diego or beyond, we want to be there for them.”
In early December, the San Diego Humane Society took in 29 kittens from the Stockton shelter. With the latest transfer, there have now been 63 cats and kittens moved from Stockton to San Diego.
The latest arrivals were divided between the San Diego Humane Society’s Oceanside campus, where 14 cats were sent, and Escondido, where 12 animals were transferred.
The Stockton shelter has been struggling with a surge in cats needing specialized medical care, as well as the more general issue of overcrowding. Several kittens are suffering from upper respiratory infections or scabies. Others have tested positive for ringworm and are at various stages of treatment.
Medicine teams at the San Diego shelters are prepared to provide isolation and treatment for the respiratory infections and ringworm cases, the Humane Society said.
Once the kittens are medically and behaviorally cleared, they will be made available for adoption, staff said.
Last summer, the Stockton Animal Shelter was dealing with such an influx of kittens — triple the usual number — the facility was seeking foster care for the animals. At the time, the shelter’s kitten foster coordinator, Sheri Giles, said the overcrowding was making it difficult for each cat to receive one-on-one human interaction.