The gray-and-white kittens asleep in a furry tangle in the lobby of the city's animal shelter don't know how lucky they are.
A few years ago, chances are they would have been euthanized rather than cleaned up and given cute, seasonal names such as Ichabod and Pumpkin. Three of the felines have been adopted and the fourth, a shy female named Spooky, will probably go soon.
They are the beneficiaries of a monumental shift in the way Baltimore cares for lost, unwanted or feral cats and dogs.
The shelter is now quasi-public, with status as a not-for-profit organization and a board of directors headed by the city's health commissioner. It is managed by an energetic executive director with years of experience working with animals at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. The shelter has about 90 regular volunteers and fundraising abilities that, while still relatively untested, have promise.
There's little doubt that the changes have saved lives.
In recent years, the shelter's adoptions have increased tenfold, from 90 adoptions in 2004 to 934 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to the city health department. In the past, 98 percent of animals that wound up at the shelter were euthanized; this year, about half were adopted or rescued by purebreed or no-kill groups.
"The way it was before, pretty much any animal that was picked up by [animal control] was euthanized," said Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, who is scheduled to trumpet the shelter's improved statistics, reorganized structure and relatively new not-for-profit status at a news briefing today. "Everything about the shelter has been transformed."
Return visitors to the shelter, now called the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter, or BARCS, will be struck by the makeover. Besides the addition of the kittens, the lobby, once a barren place with hard wooden benches, is stocked with brochures on pet adoptions and training.
Back in the kennels, dogs no longer sleep on concrete floors but on flannel blankets and towels. In a separate area, sleepy-eyed cats lounge on carpet samples in clean metal cages. Outside, there's a flowerbed dotted with white and red blooms and an enclosed dog run where volunteers can play with canines off-leash.
