Fast Facts.

What Changed:

The burden of caring for animals shifted from the shelter to volunteer rescues, without corresponding public funding, contributing to a growing pet overpopulation crisis.

These are not just statistics. The evidence shows that volunteer rescues are organized, effective, and doing an extraordinary amount of the work the community depends on. They are answering the calls, taking animals when they can, finding foster homes, arranging veterinary care, transporting animals, and helping residents who have nowhere else to turn. And they are doing it far more efficiently with every dollar available to them.

Yet despite the results these rescues are producing and the critical role they play in Contra Costa County, the County Supervisors continue to ignore their requests for meaningful, permanent funding.

If you are reading this, please do not look away. Click the button on the Home page and tell your County Supervisor to stop ignoring the residents and volunteer rescues of Contra Costa County. They are doing the work. They need the County to finally stand behind them.

CATS AND KITTENS IN THE COMMUNITY

What Changed — Beginning in 2019, Contra Costa shifted healthy cats away from shelter intake and increasingly relied on rescue-based programs, including rescue spay/neuter efforts. Volunteer rescues can absorb only a portion of the animals no longer served by the shelter. The remainder stay in the community, and when unsterilized cats reproduce, the population compounds year after year.

Estimated Cats in Contra Costa County — More than 450,000 cats in 2025

WHY SPAY/NEUTER MATTERS FOR CATS

A commonly cited figure from non-profit organizations and shelters:

DOGS: THE HUMAN COST OF RESCUE

Of the dogs entering the County shelter:

11% are killed.
24% — nearly 1 in 4 — leave the shelter through a rescue.

For rescue volunteers, those numbers are not abstract.

They may walk past rows of dogs knowing several are at risk, while also knowing they have only enough foster space and money to save one.

They have to choose which dog they can take — and which dogs they must leave behind.

It is an agonizing, repeated form of triage — a Sophie’s Choice no volunteer should have to make.

Yet rescues keep going back to the shelter, again and again, because if they do not, even more dogs will die.

These volunteer rescues are saving nearly 1 in 4 dogs leaving the County shelter, while carrying an enormous emotional burden with limited funding, limited foster homes, and limited resources.

THE FUNDING REQUEST