At first glance, the Shasta Gateway mall outside Redding, California looks like any other American strip mall: a cracked, sun-beaten parking lot; a pizza place; a cell phone store. Except every time a door opens, the sound of yips and yelps leaks out.
Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes as the Carr fire has swept across the far north of California, resulting in at least six deaths. While humans had designated places to go during the evacuation, many of their animals did not; several shelters did not accept pets.
Haven Humane Society, a local animal shelter, welcomed a surge of pets starting Thursday night and quickly found its facilities overwhelmed. It needed a new space not already occupied by evacuees or firefighters and settled on the mall, which had a number of empty storefronts, and created an instant animal shelter out of sheer force of will. At the height of the evacuation, the mall hosted more than 600 dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, and box turtles, plus a single tortoise. As of Tuesday, 463 animals remained in the 18,000 sq ft space.
- Rescued animals displaced by the Carr wildfire.
In the center of it all sits Cyanna Howden, Haven’s chief medical officer, who orchestrates an army of 400 volunteers and oversees an avalanche of donations. Howden was also evacuated with her family, her cat Ichabod, and her terriers, Spud and Tater. (“When you’re in animal care you hear certain animal names all the time, so you have to be creative,” she said). Nevertheless, she has been working 15-hour shifts here since Friday.
Under Howden’s instruction, the shelter has been divided up across five of the mall’s store spaces. One store has a maze of caged cats – dainty, fat, fluffy, furry, sleepy, wary – next to a cul-de-sac of rats, rabbits, gerbils and guinea pigs. There are other rooms for dogs and for particularly high-stress or aggressive animals, as well as a medical space where the pets, mostly cats, that started coming in a few days ago with burned paws and ears can be treated and given fluids for dehydration.
- An army of 400 volunteers sit, cuddle or take dogs for walks. A veterinarian treats a cat, bottom right.
As evacuation orders lift and families go home and find their pets, Howden expects the influx of cats needing treatment to continue. Distressed families in a hurry to leave ahead of a fire often struggle to find cats who are themselves hiding in fear.
Staff try to keep normal routines for the animals. Workers on the night shift turn the lights down around 8pm. Cats and smaller animals get regular check-ins; dogs are walked every four hours. In the back of the mall, Haven Humane has set up a dog walk made of astroturf and temporary chain link fence, shaded by red and white tents.
- Rabbits wait in cages.
On Tuesday afternoon, Julie Hamilton, a doctor at Redding’s Mercy Medical Center and still dressed in scrubs, brought her three sons and their friends to volunteer. She walked an eager dog with a bottle brush tail around the “lawn”. Nearby, Bailey (a hulking white Great Pyrenees) sniffed Lulu (a Basset hound) curiously, under the supervision of volunteer Christine Mueller.
“It’s been heartbreaking and overwhelmingly joyful,” Mueller said of her experience at the shelter. “People lose everything, but then their animals are here still.”
- Susan Pearce, of Anderson, picks up her dog, Isabelle.
Inside one of the rooms, a dog was keening, clearly distressed; Mueller winced. “With people you can explain to them, and they get it,” Mueller said. “With animals you just have to feed them and love them.”
Sometimes it just takes a volunteer sitting next to the cage. Other times they take the dog for a walk or a cuddle. Even small things seem to help. “One day after we swept up the kibble, I ran the vacuum,” Mueller said. “Hearing the vacuum, they all got so quiet. It was like a little bit of home to them.”
