Midwest Pet Refuge

01/09/2025

01/04/2025

Our newest adoptable dog is Maxwell! He’s a Boston terrier/schnauzer mix. He’s only 17 pounds so don’t let the pictures deceive you, he’s not as big as it looks and he’s all legs lol.

He’s currently in a foster home. He’s doing well, mostly house trained, crate trained, and great with friendly dogs. He probably would do best with a very playful dog to get rid of a little of his energy.

He is still all puppy, so of course doing all the naughty puppy things lol, but he loves chewing on his toys and playing and if you remember a tired dog is a good dog, he will be a great companion!
He lived with an eight-year-old boy, and appears to be great with nice children.
He’s a little interested in cats because I’ve never met them before so he would need a very confident cat if he lived with one, so it would put him in his place lol.

His adoption fee is $200.
If you are interested, please complete an application at www.midwestpetrefuge.com/adopt
He is not being fostered in Portland, so we will not be setting up meetings until applications are approved.

01/01/2025

💜💜💜

12/31/2024

We are open regular hours both days!

12/25/2024

Female cats are “seasonally polyestrous”, meaning they have multiple estrus cycles during the breeding season. As the amount of daylight begins to increase at the winter solstice, the reproductive cycle of intact females kicks into gear, and most will go into heat by late January. A female cat will keep coming back into heat every 1 to 2 weeks until she gets pregnant, or the amount of daylight decreases (October). The feline gestation period is 63 days (give or take), so the first kittens of the season can start arriving as early as February.

NOW is the ideal time time to neuter community cats to get ahead of kitten season and end the breeding cycle before it starts.

12/24/2024

So today (we are closed Mondays) we came in to a box on our front porch. I assumed it was a book donation and almost didn’t look until tomorrow, but I decided to grab it and pull it in the door. Needless to say, it was not books. The flaps were not tucked, so we are hoping none escaped. The terrified teenage tuxedo boy in the third picture was hiding on the donated cat tree sitting on our porch.

These babies are just barely eating, maybe five weeks old? Not really old enough to be away from mama yet. Had we not noticed the box, they may have sat there til tomorrow and probably would’ve escaped, froze, or gotten run over.

We have mixed feelings about this, because we do understand that there is no place to take animals, that everybody is full and everyone is turning them away. However, we had 165 in our building before this, and had to really scrounge to even find a cage to put them in. We are drowning in cats and kittens, and are always shorthanded so our volunteers that do show up are overworked.

Whoever at least tried to get these babies to safety, please, please fix the mother if you still have her. All these cats out there having litter after litter are making the problem exponentially worse. This is the worst year I’ve seen in my 14+ years of doing this. Usually by now our numbers are going down, but this year we are still at our all-time high. Every time we get spots open, more cats are desperate to come in. There are simply not enough homes for all the kittens being born.

It’s a bad situation all around, because the low-cost clinics with driving distance have either closed, raised prices or are way booked out. The state funded program is extremely hard to get into and income based. Vets are booked out and their prices have had to go up to keep up with their expenses as well. Unfortunately, this means a lot of people cannot afford to get their pets fixed or cannot get them to a place where they can afford it. I don’t see an easy solution, but if you are able, please get your cats fixed. If possible, please fix the strays in your neighborhood as well.

There’s only so much we can do. We are just a small, self-funded rescue who cannot take them all in. ☹️

12/23/2024

Update! Home safe!

These were in our parking lot. They would not come to me and just kept barking and running around. They ran into the road and almost got hit when I approached them. Last I saw them they were headed west and dodging under vehicles and I lost track of them. 😞