A pet project hit by fiscal reality

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

When I was looking for a dog a few years ago, I came across the Metro South Adoption Center, the satellite shelter for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

A friend suggested the place, which is located on a rural street in Brockton. I took my grandson, Adam. He was 2 at the time.

I expected a few dogs and cats, not rooms full of animals waiting to be adopted. But there they were, a Disney-esque lineup: rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, birds, mice, dogs, cats, even a rat.

Adam liked the rabbits and hamsters best. They were small, more his size. The dogs barked, the kittens meowed and yawned and poked their little paws through the cages. The birds squawked and fluttered their wings. All kinds of people were coming and going. We hung out in the quiet room with the rabbits, hamsters, and guinea pigs.

A few weeks later, we returned. We've been visiting this shelter since.

Adam is almost 5 now, and the dogs don't scare him anymore. He kneels and talks to them. He sits in the room full of cats and always finds one he likes a little more than the others. Last week, four doves fascinated him.

"Where will all the animals go?" he asks when I tell him this place is closing in the fall. It's the question on everyone's lips. What's going to happen to the thousands of animals cared for here every year when the shelter doesn't exist?

The decision by the MSPCA to close three of its seven shelters because of an $11 million loss in endowments has staffers and volunteers reeling. But they haven't missed a beat. They don't have time.

The animals still have to be fed. The dogs still have to be walked. The cages have to be cleaned. Books have to be sorted for a book sale. Baked goods have to be made and collected. The phone has to be answered, strays taken in, workshops planned, and donations accepted.

Donna Easingwood is a regular at the shelter. She's been making the trek from Norton for years simply to visit the animals here. Sometimes she walks a dog. Sometimes she sits and holds a cat. She's even adopted cats and dogs, and after hearing that the shelter will soon close, says: "I would do anything to turn this around. I would volunteer, give money. There have to be ways to keep this place open."

Diane from Brockton and Jeanette from Norton echo her sentiments. Both have been volunteers for 14 years. And both say the same thing: We will do everything we've been doing right along. We will do anything right up till the end.

A young woman approaches the desk, holding a cat in a carrier. It's her brother's cat, she explains. Her brother moved out and left the cat with her and her mother. The cat has already had two kittens. "We're keeping the kittens, but we can't keep the cat because she's pregnant again."

And if this shelter were closed? What would she have done then?

"Maybe placed an ad somewhere. But, really, who would take a pregnant cat?"

No one. And that's what people here fear. That there will be no safe place for animals that are sick or orphaned or abandoned because their families can't afford to keep them.

Kim Heise, who manages the shelter, admits that it was a shock to learn of the closing, but says there are options to explore: a private group taking over, the town helping out. "It's a huge undertaking," she says. But not impossible. A meeting with the community is being planned.

She's also quick to reassure people that the MSPCA "is still here with all its resources, just a phone call away."

But the remaining animal care and adoption centers are in Boston, Centerville, Methuen, and Nantucket, miles away from Brockton.

A woman, eyes rimmed with red, leads in an old dog. Two young men walk with her. "I'm putting my dog down," she says, and the air shifts and it gets a little quieter in this noisy place as a staffer accompanies the family and the dog into a private room.

If the MSPCA really shuts the door on this shelter as planned, it will be doing more than abandoning animals its mission is to protect. It will be abandoning people, too.