'We finally got it done'

By Dean Inouye
Globe staff

The Cingari family hadn’t faced a decision this big in quite a while.

While Brendan sat in his father’s lap, big sister Morgan offered her fingers for the gray-and-white cat in the bottom cage to lick.

“What do you think?” David Cingari asked his daughter, whose reply was to open the door, pick up the cat, and hug it tightly to her neck.

“I want this one,’’ she said.

Brendan opened the cage above, pulled out a gray kitten, and declared: “I want this one.”

Could they take two cats to their home in Cohasset?

“Oh, no,’’ their mother, Jaime Cingari, said with a laugh. “Just one for now.”

Though one of the felines wouldn’t be getting a new home that day, the one left behind at the new Scituate Animal Shelter wasn’t exactly in distress.

Earlier this month, the shelter moved all of its dogs and cats from a cramped facility near the Greenbush T station (now it can be told: workers sometimes parked in the T’s lot) to a bright, modern building on Route 3A.

This weekend, the new building will be crawling with people -- those who benefit from the shelter’s activities and those who make the activities possible.

“This is a lot more than an open house,’’ said Don Grilli, treasurer of the Friends of the Scituate Shelter. "There’s the message we’re trying to send to the whole community: We’re here, we’re back, we finally got it done. Come see what we’ve been able to do due to your generous support.’’

The project had seen stops and starts over the past five years, as the Friends faced one financial or legal hurdle after another.

“The general public didn’t realize what was happening,’’ said Grilli. “There was a lot of excitement, we raised a million dollars and we bought the land, and then everything kind of came to a complete stop for a year, year and a half....People were saying, ‘We gave the money, we see the land, we thought you were going to build.’ ”

The final obstacles were cleared in the fall of 2008, and construction began in November. The total cost for the five acres of land and the new building is about $1.8 million, funded by donations and a $1 million loan from MassDevelopment, some of which helped repay an earlier loan.

Construction costs were held down by free labor, including the design by Scituate architect Alan MacLeod. And because the project was done by a private, nonprofit organization rather than the town, it didn’t have to pay prevailing wages for workers.

According to shelter Director Treasa Downey (above), the new facility has 15 kennels for dogs and 40 spaces for cats, including a dozen of the “fattest, most spoiled” feral cats who have lived so long in a shelter that they can’t be released. By compairson, the old facility could comfortably handle eight dogs and up to 30 cats.

“It’s not like we’re going to be exploding and having a hundred animals,’’ she said. “Our goal is to take better care of the ones we’ve got and give them a better quality of life.”

The dogs and cats now are separated on opposite ends of a hallway, and medical procedures such as neutering take place in a surgical room, rather than on a counter.

“And when you go to the bathroom, you don’t have to worry about a cat jumping on you,’’ Grilli added.

The shelter gets its dogs and cats from owners who give up their pets, or from nearby facilities that are overcrowded. “Most of our animals come from the South Shore, but lately we’re getting more from surrounding towns, particularly Worcester, Springfield, Brockton -- towns that just don’t have good resources and are overwhelmed,” said Downey.

She estimated it takes an average of one month to find a new home for a dog and three months for a cat.

“People always [adopt pets], but we’ll keep them as long as they need a home,’’ she said. “We tend to be a little slower with our adoptions. We do behavior evaluations of all our dogs, and a full medical examination, so it takes a week or two before we even get them up on the adoption floor.”

The added space also means the shelter can expand its community outreach programs. This fall, for example, it plans to launch a program to help seniors keep their pets. Details have to be worked out, but the assistance is likely to include such things as free food and medical care for pets, or short-term stays at the shelter when the owners are in the hospital.

These will come on top of existing programs that cause Scituate's animal control officer, Kimberly Stewart, to say, "I could not do my job without them."

This includes everything from enforcing leash laws; a trap, neuter, release program for feral cats; and a fund that helps residents who can't afford to spay and neuter their pets. The fund is named after Stewart's mother, Loretta Darian, a founder of the Friends.

Needs are expanding during the recession, said Downey. “Surrenders definitely have been up recently,’’ she said. “A lot of people are moving, a lot of people are losing their homes, getting divorced.”

But even in trying economic times, the shelter hasn’t been lacking donations of time or money, said Nancy Testa, president of the Friends of the Scituate Shelter.

“Our donations are mostly from individuals, and they go from $50,000 all the way to kids with lemonade stands,’’ Testa said. “About half of it is from Scituate, but some are as far as California, Florida, Alaska -- people who have adopted here and moved....And some of our largest donations come from our volunteers.”

Downey is the only paid staffer at the shelter, which relies on a pool of 60-70 volunteers, about 35 of them active, Testa said.

“Nancy (Testa) and I have had many discussions,’’ said Grilli. “I’ve said, ‘Nance, how are we gonna get this done?’ She said, ‘The volunteers will do it.’ I said, ‘Come on.’

“We used to go back and forth, but right now, anytime she says the volunteers will do it, I don’t say a word.”

The Scituate Animal Shelter's Grand Opening takes place this Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. at 780 Chief Justice Cushing Highway. Visitors should park at the high school and take the shuttle bus. Details are available at www.ScituateAnimalShelter.org or by calling 781-545-8703.