VAUDREUIL-DORION — Anne-Marie Marquis says she has a formula for finding a pet at a foster home.
“The first one that’s going to come to me, that I feel something,” she says. As she entered a room full of stray cats, a fuzzy, black and white cat sidled up to her leg and purred.
The Vaudreuil resident says that as her community continues to boom, the number of stray animals goes up with it.
“There’s too many animals on the street,” she says.
The Vaudreuil-Dorion area lies just off the Island of Montreal, and is home to one of Canada’s fastest-growing communities. One of the chief growing pains it has to deal with now is the problem of abandoned animals.
“We’re going to have more abandoned animals, we’re going to have more lost animals,” says Pierre Bourbonnais, the president of SPCA Ouest de l’Isle. “Obviously all new houses and properties aren’t fenced in at first so a lot of animals run away.”
It’s one of the few shelters that exists west of downtown Montreal. It opened its doors last month.
“Everybody that I’d speak to was always wondering ‘what am I going to do with my cat or my dog?” he said. “There was no solution, there was no answer.”
The shelter is being built for 125 cats and 25 dogs in an old police station. The SPCA estimates it will see 3,000 animals a year.
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