Catoosa Citizens for Animal Care President Kelly Evans holds Toby, a discarded breeding dog that CCAC nurtured back to health before transferring to a rescue facility. Toby’s story is just one of dozens familiar to the organization’s volunteers, and the $8,000 Petco grant they received will help ensure that more stories like Toby’s get a happy ending.
Despite the $8,000 grant only covering a fraction of the operating costs for Catoosa Citizens for Animal Care, it and similar grants enable the organization to help more pets.Catoosa Citizens for Animal Care just got a big boost in the way of an $8,000 grant from the Petco Foundation to be put toward paying veterinary costs for homeless animals. CCAC had applied for this grant in years past, but it’s the first time the volunteer organization has won it since 2014.
Sara DeBerry sits on the board of directors for CCAC and said while this isn’t the only grant the group won this year, each is significant in what it enables the organization to do. CCAC isn’t a shelter, but aims to help pets in need of a home find one, dealing with everything from education on the importance of spay/neuter to reduce pet overpopulation, to a foster/adoption program.
“We pretty well spend what we bring in every month,” DeBerry said. “So these grants enable us to do more adoptions, rescues and transfers than we’d be able to do otherwise.”
CCAC gets dogs from shelters, pays for vet costs to get them ready for adoption and then transfers them to animal rescue facilities. The group also adopts out homeless cats to new owners locally.
While this grant will help the group tremendously, no one single payment is ever enough.