Cape Coral Animal Shelters’s low-cost clinic is back open

Tuesday, Cape Coral Animal Shelter opened its low-cost veterinary clinic in Cape Coral.

Executive Director Liz McCauley at CCAS says her team is looking for a way to help homeless animals.

“And we started to do adoptions by appointment,” McCauley said. “It’s been a great model for us and, in fact, it’s a model that we are going to keep going forward.”

The shelter opened up for the first time on March 19. Days later, the pandemic forced CCAS to close.

McCauley says they found homes for more than 500 hundred pets.

Bob Sheeler of Cape Coral adopted Maggie in June.

“When I saw her come in and saw her story, it touched my heart,” Sheeler said. “So, we decided to foster her. Well, that ended really quick. Within a week, we decided we were going to adopt her.”

Maggie was found on the street in really bad shape.

“As you can see, her skin, her hair is gone, but it’s coming back slowly,” Sheeler said.

The economic crises due to the pandemic caused several homeowners to surrender their pets to shelters. MacCauley says, in general, they haven’t seen those cases.

“We have not really seen anyone coming to our shelter and saying, ‘I can’t afford my animal because of vaccines or food,’” McCauley said. “Obviously, if they did, that we would help them.”

To keep that from happening, the shelter has programs that offer veterinary help and food for pets.

“So we want to be able to help people keep their animals in their homes,” McCauley said. “As much as we love our shelter animals and get them adopted, the most important thing is that if people have animals, and they loved them. We want them to be able to keep them.”

Services at the clinic include, but are not limited to, vaccines, microchips and de-worming. The shelter’s website shows a list of prices but, for example, vaccines range from $15 to $25, and vet visits cost about $30.

Everything is by appointment, including adoption and pet visits.

MORE: CCAS- Low-Cost Veterinary Clinic