This Month I was interested to see how lockdown has affected animal shelters. We recently rescued a cat from a leisure centre car park and decided to keep her. Before we picked her up, we were told the people working at the centre tried to call the animal shelter and due to the COVID crisis they weren’t able to pick her up and this sparked my intrigue into how they’ve been keeping. I decided to interview my Aunt (who is known as A.J Ford at work) at Mayhew cats and dogs shelter.
E.K= “How has COVID affected funding for the animals/ if people donate money where does Mayhew put it?”
A.J Ford= “There hasn’t been an immediate financial impact as yet, but we think the charity sector as a whole are waiting to see what the long-term effect will be. Due to the economic climate and so many job losses we are anticipating this to have a negative impact for us and the sector as a whole.”
E.K= “ How has COVID affected the amount of animals you’re getting in?”
A.J Ford= “The Mayhew have animal welfare officers who continue to work through the pandemic to work on rescuing stray and abandoned dogs and cats, however fewer dogs have been brought into our rescue centre to be signed over as it is suspected that people may be choosing to sell their animals rather than give them up to a rescue centre as there is such a high demand for animals at the moment. There has been a huge increase in the amount of animals being sold online.”
E.K= “How has COVID affected the amount of animals people are adopting?”
A.J Ford= “Re-homing had to be put on hold for 1 month during the first lockdown as there were many restrictions in place and so the Mayhew had to work on a strategy for making the adoption process COVID secure, that said, since the pandemic started, because so many more people are working from home there has been a higher demand for animals and more people feel they can commit to the adoption process (settling the animal into the new home and caring for them etc) so since we have been able to, adoptions have been happening as usual and also more than usual during the summer months (there is often a lull in adoptions with many travelling abroad for holidays, however fewer people travelled this summer). We also noticed that many cats who had been previously overlooked for adoption found their forever homes, which has been very heart-warming!”
Animal Welfare Charity in London Helping Dogs and Cats (themayhew.org)
