New Adoption Centre opens!

The permanent RAPS Adoption Centre has now opened!

The contract with the City of Richmond, through which RAPS operated the City Animal Shelter, ended last year in anticipation of the redevelopment of the Shelter and its site. Since then, the RAPS Adoption and Education Centre has been located in temporary quarters adjacent the RAPS Animal Hospital.

Thanks to an extraordinarily generous gift from longtime RAPS supporters Irene Scarth and Carol Dillman, RAPS purchased a modular building similar to a school portable. This double-wide building was then retrofitted to accommodate a greeting room (where animals will meet potential forever families), an intake room and an isolation room, a small office and the general population room.

The building is located outside the RAPS Cat Sanctuary, so visitors do not need to pass through the Sanctuary to meet adoptable animals. Visits are by appointment only. The site was prepared with a foundation, then stairs and a small deck were built and utilities were connected, including electrical, plumbing and a designated hot water heater.

In all, the building is about 1,100 square feet.

The new Adoption Centre will be home to cats who are seeking a forever family. Adoptable dogs will continue to be fostered in homes while RAPS raises funds to complete the new RAPS Dog Sanctuary, which will be a state-of-the-art centre for rehabilitating and socializing dogs to prepare them for a forever home.

While the Dog Sanctuary will be a temporary home for dogs, the Cat Sanctuary is the forever home for most of the residents. However, occasionally, a cat that we did not imagine would be adoptable (because it is feral or has physical or behavioural issues) becomes adoptable after socialization at the Sanctuary. In these cases, they will make the short journey from the Sanctuary to the Adoption Centre and meet potential adopters.

“Infrastructure is an enormous cost to the organization,” says RAPS CEO Eyal Lichtmann. “We can only do things like this with the support of amazing animal allies like Irene and Carol.”