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Chattanooga: McKamey Animal Care and Adoption Center opens Tuesday

By: Adam Crisp
(Contact)

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The McKamey Animal Care and Adoption Center is 26,000 square feet of the latest in animal care technology: showrooms for featured cats and dogs, a dedicated computer for visitors who want to learn more about the animals, high-tech air conditioning systems and special plumbing so animal waste can be used to fertilize the lawn.

What’s missing are the animals themselves. The facility has 500 beds for dogs, cats, kittens and puppies. On Friday, there were less than 10 cats in the facility, said Donna Deweese, the center’s spokeswoman.

The center opens its doors Tuesday, a day after the city’s contract with the Hamilton County Humane Educational Society ends. After that, animals picked up in the county and a handful of outlying communities will go to the Humane Educational Society, while the city’s animals — and its funding — go to McKamey Center in Hixson.

Tuesday also is the day that the public can get a first glimpse of the $6.5 million facility.

“We’re asking for the public to be patient with us,” Ms. Deweese said. “We’re just opening, so there are bound to be things that don’t go according to plan.”

Last week, nine senior animal control officers traveled to Little Rock, Ark., for National Animal Control Association training. Another 32 staffers, including nine additional junior officers, stayed behind for Chattanooga training, said Kerry Moyers-Horton, the center’s volunteer and rescue coordinator.

Most of McKamey’s crop of animal control officers will be new to the job. None of the nine officers currently capturing animals for Chattanooga Police Department applied to stay on for the McKamey transition, officials there said.

“I’m kind of sad about it, but I’m over being mad .... It’s one of those things that happens,” said Officer Karen Satterfield, the current animal control services supervisor, who has taken a job with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department as a jailer.

Only one of the new animal control officers at McKamey has previous experience in animal control, Ms. Moyers-Horton said. Another new officer has experience working in a zoo setting, and a junior officer has worked a large cat preserve in California, she said.

From the start, Dr. Amanda Wojtalik-Courter, the center’s executive director, has said she was looking for officers who could approach the job as an educator rather than strictly as an animal catcher.

Officer Satterfield said over the last week, two of the three officers still on the city’s payroll have been assigned to help shift operations to McKamey, so only one officer has been in the field responding to calls.

That has McKamey junior officer Michael Fitzgerald a little jittery about his first day at work.

“We have been told that, in the city, there are about 30 animals collected a day,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. So if the current staff of animal control officers has been understaffed, there could be a large number of animals waiting to be picked up, he said.

Ms. Deweese said she’s heard that some people have been holding onto animals for months, waiting on the center to open. She thinks the shelter’s dog runs and cat beds could fill quickly but notes that the facility can quickly add beds and double-up occupancy in the large dog runs.

The mission of the center is to adopt 90 percent of the animals that come through the doors. The shelter is a “low-kill” facility, she said, but it does have a room for euthanizing animals and a cooler to store the bodies.

“It wouldn’t be responsible to adopt every animal that will come here,” she said. Some animals that are aggressive or have advanced diseases and couldn’t make viable pets, she said.

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