We were contacted by the Minnesota Federated Humane Societies the week before Easter, asking us if we would have space for a large number of cats. They were working on a case in Crosby, Minnesota – a residence that authorities believed had up to 50 cats. This rarely happens, but we happened to have abnormally low numbers of cats in our shelter, so we agreed to help.
On Thursday, April 11, the Crosby Police Department with the assistance of the MN Federated Humane Societies began the process of removing the cats from the home. They found 102 in total, 94 of which were brought to Tri-County Humane Society at 5:30 p.m., and about a dozen of our dedicated staff stayed until 11 p.m. doing their intakes and setting them up with fresh litter boxes, beds, food, and water. Amazingly, we had room for all of the cats and only had to pop up a handful of floor cages. The cats were relatively social and easy to handle, making it easy to do a quick assessment, treat them for fleas, and administer subcutaneous fluids to those who needed it. There was a lot of dental disease noted, some were more on the thin side, and many of them had upper respiratory infections. During our intake process, we scanned them all for microchips, and one of the cats had one! We were able to contact the owners, and they drove immediately from Crosby to be reunited with their cat. It had been missing for more than seven years.
On Friday morning, April 12, the Crosby Police Department issued a news release that said, “Anyone missing cats in the area is encouraged to contact the Tri-County Humane society” and it listed our website and phone number. We decided to treat all of the cats as strays to give people a chance to see if their lost cat was among the group. This was a HUGE undertaking as it meant we needed to upload all of their information into our database and advertise them with pictures on our website. For reference, on a typical day, we take in an average of 12 animals. This volume, all at once, was incredibly time-consuming! But by Friday evening the task was completed, and it paid off.
On Saturday, April 13, a couple from Sartell reached out to us and said they thought one of the cats on our website looked a lot like their lost cat. Their cat, a 10-year-old neutered male, had very unique markings, and there was a neutered male that we had guessed to be 10 years old with identical markings on our website. They sent pictures and described their cat a bit more, and the similarities were undeniable, so we invited them to come in and take a look in person. It was their cat, who had been missing for six months to the day. By chance, KARE 11 was at our shelter interviewing us about the Crosby cats when the Sartell couple showed up.
We also received visits from WCCO, KSTP, and Fox 9, we were aired on the MPR morning show, WJON, KNSI, and seven stations in the Brainerd Lakes area, and we were featured in the Star Tribune, St. Cloud Times, St. Cloud Live, the Newsleader, even a paper in New York picked up the story! Thanks to the attention from media and our devout social media followers, over the course of the five days we received over 200 emails from people hoping we had their lost cat. Sadly, we did not find any other matches.
Fast-forward to today – we have a number of Crosby cats in foster care or being treated in our isolation rooms who are not quite ready to be released yet, but we have successfully adopted out about 20 Crosby cats so far, and we have just as many ready and waiting for adoption. Our amazing staff and volunteers have gone above and beyond the call of duty to make sure these cats receive the love and care that they need, and the outpouring of support - some from complete strangers across the United States - has been absolutely humbling. In our 50 years, this is by far the largest group of animals we have taken in at one time, and we couldn't have done it without the help of our amazing community. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.
