Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico – Puerto Vallarta animal shelters face many challenges in their day-to-day mission to care for abandoned animals and find them forever homes. Individuals run most shelters, and the cost of feeding and caring for the animals falls to the individual.
The ACOPIO (municipal animal shelter) receives minimal government funding, but it’s up to volunteers to raise money for food and medicines. People’s lack of awareness of the staggering number of abandoned animals in Vallarta means they don’t realize that it falls to those shelters to keep the doors open for this valuable service daily.
Is there such a thing as “kitten season”? Yes, and in North America, it’s just a few months of the year. In Puerto Vallarta, where the weather is mild year-round, “kitten season” is year-round. The cats giving birth are predominately stray and feral cats who haven’t been spayed or neutered, resulting in a surging population across the greater Banderas Bay area.
While this sounds like a magical time full of tiny paws and bundles of purring fur babies, it can be a hectic time for animal shelters trying to manage a large number of abandoned kittens. The animal shelters in Puerto Vallarta usually run at total capacity with very tight budgets, and their capacities are stretched thin.
The free spay and neuter clinics in Vallarta, such as Cuale Spay and Neuter Clinics and Colina Spay and Neuter Clinic, are doing an excellent job, but more work must be done. Unlike most other animals, cats can continuously give birth to litters of four to six kittens. Female cats can become pregnant at five months and produce several litters in a single year.
Paws and Claws Puerto Vallarta is a registered US 501(c)(3) charity committed to ensuring that dogs and cats in the Vallarta area lead a life free from the pain and suffering of abandonment and neglect. We aim to achieve our mission by financially supporting rescue, shelter, sterilization, adoption, and fostering activities. In addition, we support community education to achieve a long-term solution to the problem of abandoned, abused, and neglected animals.
How can you help? You can help to support a shelter or a spay and neuter clinic by donating to Paws and Claws Puerto Vallarta at pawsandclawspv.org. Our board members and advisory committee are all volunteers, so every dollar donated supports the animals. Other ways to help a Vallarta animal shelter would be to provide supplies directly to them, such as litter, food, and money to provide vaccines and other veterinary services, or foster an animal.
Paws and Claws Puerto Vallarta is dedicated to ensuring that dogs and cats in the Puerto Vallarta area of Mexico lead a life free from the pain and suffering of abandonment and neglect. They achieve this by financially supporting the numerous small local rescuers who have a big hearts but limited financial means. Every dollar donated will be used to improve the lives of rescued cats and dogs in the Puerto Vallarta area. Together we can make a world of difference, one paw at a time.
Learn more at pawsandclawspv.org.
