LangleyAdvanceA22 Welcome to the Neighbourhood, 2016 ANIMAL WELFARE

Dogs and cats and bears – and more – are among the animals sheltered around the community.

Langley wouldn’t be the community it is with-out its animals, and the people who love them.

One of Langley’s animal lovers was Patti Dale, a tireless vol-unteer and advocate for animal welfare who changed the way strays and surrendered dogs and cats were sheltered in the Langleys.

Dale became an SPCA volun-teer in 2000 after leaving her job to deal with a cancer diagnosis.

That work led her to create a network of animal fostering volunteers, and in 2003 they became the Langley Animal Protection Society.

LAPS would go on to establish its own no-kill shelter for dogs and cats in the Langleys, taking over the SPCA’s role of provid-ing animal control and adoption services.

The shelter opened in 2003, and Dale was soon pushing for the small facility to be replaced with a larger one by Langley Township. Her efforts, and the efforts of other volunteers, bore fruit and the new shelter was opened in 2008.

Dale didn’t live to see the new shelter open, losing her battle with cancer in 2005. The new facility was named the Patti Dale Animal Shelter in her honour.

Now the shelter is looking at expanding again, with plans for what it calls an ISOasis facility for cats.

The new facility, 40 per cent funded by the Township, will see construction start in 2016

and is to provide more space for sick cats that need to be kept in quarantine before being put up for adoption.

An increasing number of cats being brought in led for calls for the new facility. LAPS has spent several years fundraising for the project.

The Patti Dale Animal Shelter can be found at 26220 56th Ave., or by phoning 604-857-5055. See some of their adoptable cats and dogs online at www.lapsbc.ca.

Another well-known local shelter is the CARES Cat Shelter, which helps stray felines and adopts them out to new homes. CARES has recently expanded its shelter facility with more caged outdoor areas for their animals to get some fresh air.

Every year, CARES hosts pub-lic fundraisers, including an annual Walk-A-Thon in Derby Reach Regional Park and a Bowlathon at Willowbrook Lanes in Langley City.

As a no-kill shelter, CARES tries to find homes for all the stray, abandoned, or unwanted cats that come through its doors.

Contact CARES through 604-532-5632 or info@carescatshel-ter.com, or to inquire about an adoptable animal, contact adoptions@carescatshelter.com. Learn more at caresshelter.com.

One of the more recent addi-tions to the scene in Langley is TinyKittens, a society of volun-teers who foster cats and work to trap, and spay or neuter feral cats around the Langleys and nearby areas.

TinyKittens’ Facebook page has become a worldwide phe-nomenon, and attracts thousands of viewers for its videos and livestreams of kittens.

One of their most famous residents is Cassidy, a kitten found living feral on a farm in rural Langley in 2015. Cassidy had lost both his back feet and

was somehow still alive when he was caught. Volunteers like Shelly Roche nursed him back to health, and are now exploring options for giving Cassidy more mobility.

Numerous rescue cats and kittens can be viewed through either www.tinykittens.com or www.facebook.com/tinykittens.

It’s not just cats and dogs that get love in Langley, however.

Even wild animals have a place to recuperate and heal, at the Critter Care Wildlife Society.

At its shelter in South Langley, nestled in Campbell Valley Regional Park, the volunteers of the society take in orphaned and injured wild animals including a host of black bear cubs, fawns, raccoons, skunks, opossums, squirrels, marmots, otters, and more.

The ultimate goal is to let the animals heal and then return

them to the wilderness.

One of Critter Care’s big

events is its annual open house in July, one of the few times members of the public are allowed to visit the grounds and see some of the animals.

Learn more about Critter Care at www.crittercarewildlife.org.

If you have an emergency regarding a wild mammal in distress, call Critter Care at 604-530-2064.

Aldergrove in eastern Langley is home to one of western Canada’s largest public col-lections of wild animals, the Greater Vancouver Zoo.

Established in the early 1970s, the zoo has undergone num-erous renovations since then. Visitors can see everything from North American mammals such as grizzly bear, wolves, and elk to exotic species such as lemurs and lions, giraffes and wallabies.

The zoo is located at 5048 264th St. Visit gvzoo.com for more information on hours,

group rates, membership and school trips.

Langley supports animals wild and domestic

Matthew Claxton/Langley Advance

Mary Miller, right, and her children Matthew and Lizy volunteer helping with the cats at the LAPS Patti Dale Animal Shelter, including clean up up after Hola, a seven-year-old cat in need of a new home.

BCRCMP photo

RCMP Sgt. Lorne Lecker, a six-year volunteer at Critter Care, held a young raccoon at the society’s 2015 open house.

One of the adoptable cats at the Patti Dale Animal Shelter in Aldergrove, operated by the Langley Animal Protection Society.Matthew Claxton/Langley Advance