As of Tuesday, January 2nd, Holly is feeling fantastic! She has now moved on up to the adoption room and is purring, happy feet-ing, head butting, and loving life. Please consider adopting Holly. We may not be able to save every animal, but every animal deserves a chance. (Submitted photo)

By Patrick McLaughlin,

SPCA Executive Director

Happy New Year! May 2024 bring all of us, and especially the animals at the Chenango SPCA, everything we need! With that in mind, I would like to share several updates with you for this new year:

First, as you know, what our animals need most is a loving, adoptive forever home. Many of them have been through a lot (see Kathy's remarks about Holly below), and a home where they will be loved and cared for, and where they can love and care for their people, is what they need most of all.

I am overjoyed  to share with you one way that getting these lovable companions into their forever homes just got much, much easier: Thanks to the  incredible generosity of an anonymous donor, we are able to re-open our Safe Haven Fund for Animals! This fund will be used to cover 100 percent of adoption costs. That means you (or someone you know) can welcome a new pet into your life and family for free!  This will continue as long as we have funds available!

Second, not all news is good news. In these difficult times, small businesses and nonprofits like ours sometimes need to make tough decisions to operate within our means. At the Chenango SPCA, that's going to mean changing our public visiting hours:

Until further notice, we will be open Tuesday from 12:00 to 7:00 PM; Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 12:00 to 4:30 PM; and closed on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday. As before, there will be limited availability to schedule appointments on "closed" days for special circumstances, but only with advanced notice, and depending on staff availability.

Hopefully, we will be able to add Mondays back into our schedule soon!

Finally, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, the 18th annual Fur Ball is coming up on February 10, 2024. This is an excellent opportunity to support the animals in our shelter while enjoying a wonderful evening with live music, a silent auction, delicious "hearty" hors d'oevres, and the fine company of our community's animal lovers! 

Start 2024 with generosity!

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Introducing Holly

By Kathy Wyder, LVT

Shelter Manager

We are so excited to introduce you to five year old Holly! As you can see, she's pretty excited too!

This young girl came to us just over three weeks ago as a stray. Some strays need more help than others, and poor Holly needed  a lot  of help! We'll start with her weight, which was only 3.25 pounds. That's the average weight for a 14 week old kitten! Holly also was infested with fleas, did not have much of an appetite, was lethargic, had a double ear infection, and was pale (due to the fleas).

Now after taking care of all those issues (and, sorry to say, a bath), Holly started feeling better. She was given internal worming medication, including an injection for tapeworms (from fleas), she needed SQ fluids twice for dehydration and was tested--and came back negative--for Felv/Fiv. And then Holly had  another  complication, out of nowhere she spiked a fever of over 105 degrees! Off to Pet Street Station Holly went for IV fluids and antibiotics to get the fever down.

Now the really good news (of course we have good news):

As of Tuesday, January 2nd, Holly is feeling Fantastic! She is putting weight on, eating like a champ, her fleas are gone, she is almost done with her antibiotics, was able to get her vaccines and, if all continues going well, Holly will be spayed in a couple of weeks.

She has now moved on up to the adoption room and is purring, happy feet-ing, head butting, and loving life. Please consider adopting Holly. We may not be able to save every animal, but every animal deserves a chance!