By Keitha Nelson
BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) – The oil and the weather are taking a toll on animal shelters farther inland from the coast. Many pet owners can no longer afford to take care of their animals. PETA is stepping in to give dozens of cats and dogs a home.
Crying out, confused and unaware of their future, cats and dogs are being packed up and shipped out of the Denham Springs Animal Shelter.
“There are some that I’m going to certainly miss,” said Denham Springs Animal Shelter Director Vicki Sibley. “You’re going to make me cry because I’ve known them for like, three years.”
Sibley says many of the cuddly cats and canines have been there since they were just weeks old. It’s hard to part with them, but she realizes in their shelter the animals may never find a permanent home.
PETA plans to house the pets in a riverside community in Norfolk, VA, where they believe they’ll stand a better chance of being adopted.
Sibley says many of them have been waiting for months, in some cases years, for that perfect family.
She says things seemed to have just fallen into place with PETA volunteers and Uship.com wanting to help out free of charge.
“We recently heard about the overflow of the animal shelters here in the Gulf Coast-area and we decided we needed to step in and help,” said Matthew Chasen, CEO of Uship.com.
The animals are expected to arrive in Virginia early Wednesday morning, in a new location with new found hope.
A spokesperson for PETA says some of the animals ended up at the animal shelter as a result of the BP oil spill. Their owners couldn’t take care of them after losing their source of income.
See the original article at WAFB.com.
