But what would become of the animals?

Byline: Thomas Caywood

WORCESTER -- Doreen M. Currier sometimes lies awake at night wondering what would become of the region's stray dogs and cats if the Worcester Animal Rescue League shelter she runs had to shut down.

Would they be left to starve? Or rounded up and euthanized?

Her restless, late-night musings are more than gloomy speculation.

After 95 years of continuous operation, the Holden Street shelter that takes in thousands of lost, abandoned and unwanted animals a year has nearly depleted the $2 million endowment that has supported it since the 1950s, Ms. Currier said. The shelter could be forced to close by early next year if she doesn't find another source of funding soon.

"It's slowly going down the tubes," Ms. Currier said glumly last week as shelter employees popped into her office periodically asking about supply orders and other business.

If the shelter fails, Worcester and 17 other area municipalities would have to scramble to find somewhere else to take the strays that animal control officers pluck off their streets. In the short term, strays would have to be left to roam free in some communities. Cash-strapped cities and towns eventually might have to find money in their tight budgets to build and operate their own shelters.

Steve Donahue, director of Worcester Animal Control Office, said he has no idea what he'd do with the 50 or 60 stray dogs and cats his staff drops off at the Worcester Animal Rescue League shelter in an average month.

"They also do euthanasia of sick animals, potentially rabid skunks and raccoons for us. They are a huge resource for us," Mr. Donahue said.

Holden Animal Control Officer Mike Sendrowski said he was stunned to hear of the shelter's precarious financial situation. He said he can't think of anywhere else to take the animals he rounds up.

"In the beginning, we wouldn't be picking up any stray dogs or feral cats because we don't have a facility for them in Holden, nor do we want one," he said. "If people called wanting us to pick up strays, we'd have to say, `Sorry, there's nowhere to put them.'"

Among the other municipalities that bring their strays to the shelter are Barre, Charlton, Hubbardston, Oakham, Shrewsbury, Sterling and Templeton.

Ms. Currier spent two decades in hotel management before taking a management job at the shelter in 1999. She took over as shelter director in 2005.

Her guests are more cuddly now and don't complain as much, she quipped, but the economics of running a nonprofit animal shelter are far more unforgiving. Imagine a hotel in which guests stay for weeks or months without paying a dime, and get medical care on the house all the while.

A few hours earlier, a man had brought in an injured kitten he found by the side of the road. "We look at that kitten and say, `We have to save its life,'" Ms. Currier said.

Operating the busy shelter costs roughly $75,000 a month including salaries for nine employees, and mountains of dog food and medical care for the roughly 200 animals housed there at any one time. The power bill alone totals about $2,000 a month, she said.

In a good month, the shelter takes in about $12,000 in adoption fees, which range from $50 for cats more than 7 years old to $325 for puppies and dogs less than a year old. The shelter also boards dogs for $20 a day and cats for $10 a day. A handful of fundraising events each year brings in another $50,000 or so a year.

But it's not enough. "The math just doesn't work," Ms. Currier said.

Even with a steady income from adoption fees, which the shelter has increased again and again over the last decade, it has to dip into its dwindling endowment for $20,000 every six weeks or so to make ends meet, she said.

The city and other area municipalities pay the shelter $10 a day to house stray animals for 10 days in the event an owner turns up. After that, they're the Worcester Animal Rescue League's responsibility.

In one corner of the building, three-dozen tiny kittens too young to be put up for adoption sleep in large cages stacked two high. They range in age from 3 weeks to 8 weeks.

"This is what we get, kitten after kitten after kitten," Ms. Currier said. "They bring them in by the box load."

Through a steel door, in a segregated kennel area for strays not yet put up for adoption, she has to raise her voice to be heard over the din of barking dogs echoing off cement floors and cinderblock walls. Calvin, a Chihuahua mix stray brought in early last month, looks up at her with red, inflamed eyes - a serious medical condition called cherry eye. The shelter has scheduled a $400 surgery to treat the dog so he can be put up for adoption.

Ms. Currier greets most of the animals by name in a baby-talk voice as she walks down the rows of cages.

There's Meghan, a black Labrador mix left homeless when her elderly owners had to move into a nursing home. And 11-year-old Mandy, a mixed-breed dog who was pregnant when she arrived at the shelter. All of her puppies have been adopted, but graying Mandy remains.

The average animal stays in the shelter for two to three weeks at a cost of

$200 to $300. Puppies and kittens go fast, but older dogs and cats can stay for three or four months before finding a home.

Ms. Currier said she's been scrambling to find some other source of money to keep the shelter afloat. She has applied for a grant from Maddie's Fund, a California-based animal charity, and investigated corporate sponsorships or some kind of capital campaign.

"Whatever it is, I'm willing to do it," Ms. Currier said.

Shrewsbury Animal Control Officer Leona M. Pease said she, too, worries about the shelter's plight, and not just because she wouldn't have anywhere to take the town's strays. "They're so helpful and so kind. In fact, I found my friend a dog there. I put one of my strays in the back and saw this cute little Maltese."

Her friend later adopted the dog, Dewley.

Debbie Sjogren of Leicester recently took home a chocolate lab named Latte from the shelter. The dog's original owners had bought her as a puppy but apparently weren't up for the responsibility, Ms. Sjogren said.

They dropped the dog off at the shelter, and the Worcester Animal Rescue League fed her, housed her and paid to have her spayed. Ms. Sjogren said she worries about what might happen to dogs like Latte were it not for the shelter.

"They would just be left on the side of the road or, God forbid, worse," she said. "These animals don't have anywhere else to go."

Contact Thomas Caywood by e-mail at [e-mail].

ART: PHOTOS, GRAPH

CUTLINE: (1) Ethan Rockwell gives his dog, Baxter, a hug as the Rockwell family leaves Baxter to board at the Animal Rescue League. (2) Kittens at the Animal Rescue League wait for homes. A shortage of funds could force the shelter to close. (GRAPH) Worcester Animal Rescue league / Animals taken in, Animals placed in homes

PHOTOG: (PHOTOS) T&G Staff/JIM COLLINS (GRAPH) T&G Staff/STACEY ARSENAULT