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By Shane Clausing

barn buddies program

Bandaged Paws Barn Buddies program helping acreage owners keep rodent population down

Aug 8, 2020 | 7:00 AM

The Bandaged Paws Animal Rescue Association in Grande Prairie is helping acreage owners keep the rodent population down on their properties.

For the past eight years, Bandaged Paws has operated their Barn Buddies program, which allows people who own acreage or farm type homes, to adopt semi-feral or feral cats to help keep the rodent population on their property down.

“With our Barn Buddies program, we take these cats and (sometimes) we’re unable to fully socialize them to be house pets, so we have them spade or neutered, we deworm them, and then we send them to farm or acreage type homes that are looking for a cat that suits that,” explained Natasha Arsenault with Bandaged Paws.

“They (the cat) are more of one that’s not going to be social, but they have a job to do, and more or less, they’ll be out there catching mice and they just ask for food, water and shelter in return.”

According to Arsenault the program does help lower the stray cat population in the Peace Region.

“It’s one of those things that there’s so many stray cats, that it’s one of our initiatives to help with the over population of cats. We do see a large stray problem with cats especially in the County, but it’s prevalent in the city as well.”

Arsenault says the largest demand for the cats is during the springtime.

“In the spring, we honestly have more demand for them (the cats) than we can keep up with, because the mice are coming out when the snow starts to melt. We have to wait until they (the cats) are fixed and healed before we can send them out to the barn homes.”

Bandaged Paws says it takes between three and four months in order to get cats ready for the program, as they have to get fixed and healed before they can be sent out to the barn homes.

Right now, the organization has eight semi-feral or feral type cats looking for a home.

Those interested in adopting cats are asked to contact Bandaged Paws.