West Columbia Gorge Humane Society: The cat’s meow

The shelter needs to keep four kennels open for city and county dogs; it can host about 90 cats and 11 dogs total.

“If you look at our total amount of cats, there are 180 cats and about 30 dogs,” said Fruechtel.

“So, about 50 percent of those animals are not in our physical building,” he noted. Instead, those animals are cared for in foster homes.

Three people run the shelter: the executive director, the volunteer services manager and the kennel supervisor. According to Fruechtel, every employee is a volunteer, everyone works hard and hardly anyone ever sits at a desk.

While the shelter gets help from the community, it also helps give back too.

“We are on the Clark County Elder Justice task force. We sat in with the Clark County district attorney, assistant district attorney, several county commissioners and several police officers, and we are working on abuse to elderly people and what happens to their pets,” said Fruechtel.

In October the clinic is getting together with the Humane Society for Southwest Washington to conduct a mass spay-and-neuter event.

“We are going to go after low-income and feral cat populations, and we are going to try and do 100 spay and neuters in one day,” Fruechtel stated.

The shelter is hoping, within the next five years, to make Clark County the first no-kill county in Washington State.

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