As of yesterday the Kenai Animal changed its intake methods, locking the outdoor cages where it used to accept animals after hours.
Despite that change, City Manager Rick Koch said the shelter is definitely still accepting animals after hours.
Koch: “We are requesting that people call our police dispatch number and a police officer or an animal control officer will respond and take the animal in. This provides a much more humane process and a process that has the opportunity for much higher success in getting a lost animal back to an owner and for finding out information about an animal so that we are more efficiently able to adopt them.”
The Kenai Police Department can be reached at 283-7879.
Koch described some of the conditions animals had previously been found in, saying the new methods are far more humane.
Koch: “We’ve had multiple animals put in those cages outside and they’ve gotten in fights and they’re stuck in the cage, we’ve had kittens put in there with no blankets, no cover because the stuff we’ve had in there was removed and it’s subzero weather with the wind blowing. We’re trying to enhance a process no eliminate it.”
He said the rumors that this move is to prevent Kenai Animal Control from accepting animals from outside city limits, often called “borough animals”, is untrue and they will continue to accept animals from outside of Kenai.
Mayor Pat Porter had said she was contacted by people concerned about the change and she encouraged them to bring forward their concerns at the January 7 Kenai City Council meeting.
Koch said that the cages will remain and if this method does not pay off in the way that they think it will, the shelter can go back to using it’s prior methods however he does not see that happening.