Picture yourself walking across campus and you see a small cat, shivering, running for cover from the harsh realities of being a stray on a college campus.
Shippensburg University employee Sara Pike has the solution. With help from students and community members, she hopes to provide food, shelter and healthcare to stray cats around the SU campus.
Pike is the technical services and systems manager at the Ezra Lehman Memorial Library, but also has a passion for saving cats. She, along with members of organizations such as Nobody’s Cats and Alley Cat Allies, hopes to educate and train people at SU and the community on ways to properly trap, feed, build shelters and provide the accurate healthcare to stray and feral cats.
Stray cats, no matter where they are, run the risk of falling ill, being injured or being massively overpopulated, Pike said. To help with these problems, Pike has gotten approval from SU to bring a program to campus. The program is designed to get students involved with the initial rehabilitation of stray animals.
“[The] main goal is to reduce population,” Pike said, about the overpopulation of cats on campus. Maintaining their health is another priority of Pike. “[This program is] just a way to greatly alleviate potential suffering.”
Pikes’ long-term goal is to incorporate students and cats, living harmoniously together at SU. By bringing her program to the college, she hopes to start a student organization, targeting those who have a passion to save and rehabilitate stray and feral cats, so they are not sent to shelters to receive a death sentence, she said. By rehabilitating these cats, Pike wants to attempt to socialize cats to have them adopted out to forever-homes, which are places where the new owner can care for them for life.
Although providing food for cats could be a safety hazard due to wild animals invading campus, Pike’s ideal solution to that is having a rotation of students provide food for the cats in increments of no more than an hour.
“[The] goal is to not attract other wildlife,” said Pike.
Having employees from her program along with volunteers providing for the cats can potentially become a reality.
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