Local nonprofits prioritize pets

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) - Several Panama City nonprofit organizations are fundraising for animal services.

Saturday morning Operation Spay Bay hosted its Spay Bay Fun Day. The event featured face painting, a dunking booth, food, clinic tours and was pet and family friendly.

The event was designed to help fundraise for the expansion of Operation Spay Bay. The organization surpassed its ten-thousand-dollar goal but will need nearly three million to for a new clinic.

Spay Bay Co-founder Terry Cotter says the move is all in an effort to better serve the community.

“There’s a great need in this community for just veterinary care across the board and we’re a lower cost and we concentrate on spay and neuter but as the years go by, we’ve realized that people are looking for full veterinary care at an affordable price so that’s what we are trying to do,” Cotter said.

Nine Lives Kitty Rescue is also on a mission to help out four-legged-friends across the county.

Members celebrated the organizations five-year anniversary and kicked off a first ever annual kitten shower. The kitten shower is a way to raise goods and resources to continue rescuing and rehabilitating felines.

The event also served as a fundraising event to rack up funds that will go toward neuter and spay services, as well as the of vaccinations of feral cats to reduce the feline overpopulation in the Florida Panhandle.

Nicole Buckley is the president of Nine Lives Kitty Rescue. She says there are many ways to help out the organization’s efforts.

“We rescue a minimum of 400 cats from the streets every year and we need a lot of supplies to help us care for that many cats now naturally we’re not doing that all at one time,” Buckley said. “But throughout the year that’s still a lot of cats and we still need help from the community to help us provide care to those cats with food and litter and treats even and we also need to get some fosters because we can get more kitty cats off the streets if we had more people helping us do it.”

Florida non-profit Organization committed to rescue, rehabilitate, & adopt homeless felines to their forever home! Trap, Neuter/Spay, Vaccinate & Return feral cats in an effort to reduce the feline overpopulation in the Florida Panhandle / Bay County

To donate to the feline efforts, connect through their Nine Lives Kitty Rescue Facebook page.

To donate to the low-cost spay/neuter clinic connect through the Operation Spay Bay Facebook page.

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