The building is large enough to house 200 young cats in four separate “kitten areas,” which will be adjourned with cat condos, scratching posts, and cat trees.

Photo by Jessica Vaughn

The facility includes a kitchen, cleaning area, an isolation room where ill cats will be cared for away from the rest of the group, and a full surgical suite.

Photo by Jessica Vaughn

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FOLEY - It’s been less than a year since Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, and Foley Animal Care and Control organizations came together and formed the Safe Harbor Animal Coalition. The group began Trap, Neuter, Release (TNR) programs in the tri-city area, and are now putting the final touches on the Safe Harbor Animal Clinic.

The clinic will provide a way to perform spays and neuters on stray and feral animals and provide a safehouse for kittens on their way for adoption. So far, over $200,000 has been donated within the clinic, including the building itself, flooring, HVAC units, and more.

“This is going to help us reduce the feral cat population in Baldwin County, and help with dog rescues too,” said Safe Harbor Chairman Steve Solomon. Since the program came to Foley last August, over 400 feral cats have already been trapped, he said.

The clinic will offer state-of-the-art veterinary equipment, with separate rooms for housing cats pre-operation, a prep room to ready the “patients,” an operating room with five tables, and a recovery room where the cats, typically females, will be housed overnight post-op. Feral cats will be released back into their colonies after recovery, now unable to breed. Kittens and domesticated cats will be moved to large playrooms and will be put up for adoption.

“We have the Auburn vet students committed to coming down to perform the surgeries,” Solomon said. “During senior year they have to get so many spay and neuters in to graduate, so they’ll be doing that with us, which will reduce our costs even more. Coastal Community College is going to bring the vet tech students in to prep the cats for operation. To monitor and assist the students, we already have a fulltime doctor and a fulltime vet tech committed to the project.”

The price to spay or neuter animals within the clinic will be half what the group is paying currently, allowing for more cats and dogs to go through the TNR program. Solomon says with five surgical tables, the hope is to get 9,000 spays and neuters performed in the clinic per year.

“There’s maybe 50,000 feral cats in Baldwin County,” he said. “I see them every day. We’re never going to get this done at $100 per cat, it would cost us millions and millions of dollars, and we just can’t raise that kind of money. If we can cut those costs while teaching the next vet students, we can make a change.”

He hopes to see the feral cat population significantly reduced within the next five years.

The final step to having the clinic up and running is purchasing the surgical suite, which will cost around $130,000. To achieve this, Safe Harbor has requested $35,000 apiece from Foley, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, and Baldwin County. Both Foley and Gulf Shores have already committed contingent upon all three cities agreeing to the donation. Orange Beach will be voting at a future council.

To help offset other costs of opening the clinic, Safe Harbor is applying to multiple grants, including Impact 100.

“I am so impressed with this volunteer group that has stepped up and is doing the level of what they’re doing,” said Foley councilmember Ralph Hellmich. “They’ve been working very closely with the county as well as our staff here and the other cities. We were trying to do a slightly more ambitious project that was going to be a lot more money than this, and these folks will be accomplishing basically the same thing for less. This is a really good thing and it will help the entire county out.”

“The goal with this clinic is to reduce our operation costs, save money for the taxpayers, and get these spays and neuters done quickly, efficiently, and humanely,” Solomon said. “One day we hope to create a shelter, but that’s on pause right now. For now, we’re focusing on reducing the feral population.”

To learn more, donate, or to volunteer, visit https://safeharboranimalcoalition.org.