Dear Fur-iends,
I can’t believe that we’re in the home stretch for the Unleash the Dream Capital Campaign! When I last wrote to you, I told you about the new behind the scenes grooming room and dog isolation area. Now, construction has started to improve areas that our Cleveland APL’s visitors see, and just in time for the Adoptions team to start welcoming adopters back into the building to look at my adoptable friends!
When my parents adopted me, the Cleveland APL’s adoption lobby was a wide-open space with one desk where you had to stand. In the summer, the beautiful windows in the ceiling would make the lobby so hot. Adopters would stand next to each without any ability to have a private conversation. It worked, but my friends at the APL always dreamed of giving each family a much more comfortable, personalized adoption experience.
The new adoption lobby has a number of private consulting “cubbies” so that adopters can sit down and receive individualized care when finding their new family members. There’s a designated greeter desk at the front so that new visitors can easily find their way around this amazing new shelter. Those windows in the ceiling have a fancy new film that reduces the amount of heat that comes through and makes the space more comfortable for people and animals. It also still lets the sunshine through, which is great, because sunshine makes me happy! And even more exciting is that there will soon be two adoption stations in the cat adoption room—allowing cat adopters to complete their entire adoption right where they met their new best fur-riends.
Hey! Do you know what a catio is? I didn’t, but let me tell you, it’s amazing! At the APL the new catios are two group living spaces for cats at the front of the building that have big windows and access to safe, caged-in outdoor enclosures. That means my feline friends can sit outside and enjoy fresh air when the weather is nice. I love when a fresh breeze blows through a window, and I’m happy that the cats at the Cleveland APL will now get to enjoy it, too. They will even be able to watch the butterflies and birds that come to hang out on the new plantings. It’s like they get their own TV!
This last wave of work is about making sure the front of the shelter matches all of the amazing changes that the back end of the shelter got. This means that adoptable dogs also will have new, bigger kennels to spend time in, no matter how long it takes for them to find their fur-ever homes.
Not every animal who comes to the Cleveland APL needs major medical help like I did; for some they’re just coming to find a loving home to call their own. My friends and I are all happy that very soon, animals will have an even better experience while they’re at the APL than they did before, and from the moment they set paw into the Cleveland APL!
The APL team is on the home stretch to raise the remaining funds to complete the Unleash the Dream Capital Campaign and now is your time to make a donation that will make a difference in the lives of animals that will come to the Cleveland APL for years to come!