Animals get helping hands against cold

In a rush to prepare for below-zero temperatures this week, a local animal shelter had to devise a plan to keep its animals warm.

The Callaway Hills Animal Shelter - located on State Road TT just off U.S. 54 in Callaway County - currently has 30 dogs, many housed in outdoor pens.

"We still have a few outside," said Kameha Underwood, an animal caretaker at the shelter. "We put windbreakers up and have double-paned doghouses. We bumped up the amount of straw in the pens and brought the older dogs inside."

She said the shelter's goal is to raise funds and get all of the animals inside by next winter.

"This outdoor stuff is getting too rough," she said.

Underwood said the shelter didn't receive any phone calls over the weekend from people finding animals left out in the cold.

That was also the case at the Jefferson City Animal Shelter.

"I think the community has done a really good job getting them inside," said Karen Jennings, animal control supervisor.

Another local animal group also has been preparing animals for the cold.

Jennifer Tergin and Jackie Fischer are the founders of Wild Thing-Feral Feline Fix, a non-profit local organization that traps, neuters and returns feral cats to where they were found.

For the past several months, the women have been building cat shelters and getting them to people who need them most.

"People we have helped spay and neuter their cats, several of them had contacted us for help," she said. "We knew they needed help, were proactive on it and had some shelters in place about a month ago."

She said she and Fischer were running around just two days ago bringing straw to people and getting more houses out where they were needed.

"A lot of these cats, some of them have a garage or barn to live in and that's fantastic," Tergin said. "But, a lot of them just live in people's backyards and really don't have any form of shelter. Those are the ones we're really trying to focus on."