No one knows what will happen to the 24 dogs and roughly 100 cats currently housed in the inland Humane Society animal shelter in Redwood Valley if the shelter has to close its doors.
"I really don't think we can make it six months if we don't raise some funds," shelter director Sheryl Mitcham said.
Donations are down while the number of animals coming in is up. The shelter does year-round fund raising, but needs "fresh ideas" to find the roughly $120,000 the shelter needs just to break even, according to Mitcham.
"We need ideas about how to do something big," she said.
Shelter volunteer Taffy Montgomery was more blunt.
"We're desperate," she said, holding a 2-week-old, bottle-fed kitten the staff named Andy, who was found on the street in Willits. "We barely keep our doors open."
Rising foreclosures have displaced household pets and driven up the numbers of cats being surrendered to the shelter by an estimated 30 percent, while donations - the sole source of the shelter's funding - have fallen by about half in the last year, according to Mitcham.
"This year we've already surpassed what we did last year," she said. "We're already up to 300 cats."
There is no more room for cats, she said. Respiratory sickness is spreading through the shelter's current population, she said, because space doesn't allow them to stay at least five feet apart - the average distance a cat can sneeze.
Veterinary care is the shelter's biggest expense, according to Mitcham, with cats and dogs alike needing spay and neuter operations, shots, monthly flea treatments and other care.
Chloe, a flat-faced Persian, needs expensive dental work. One of the shelter's dogs has heartworm, and the dogs are given treatment as needed to prevent the condition, according to Mitcham. The last heartworm bill was about $500, she said, which would cover about two months of treatments for the shelter's 24 dogs.
To compound the problem, the companion animals are staying longer in the shelter.
"Our adoptions are really, really way down," kennel manager Stacy Dennett said. "If we get a dog and it's highly adoptable, sometimes it'll be gone in 24 hours. But we have highly adoptable dogs that have been here for months."
Dennett attributes the fall in adoptions to the economy.
"People are losing their homes and moving, and many times the new landlords won't accept animals," she said.
The prices for spaying and neutering, as well as for other goods like food, have risen, according to Montgomery. She is one of five volunteers who foster very small kittens, providing round-the-clock care.
Mitcham said spaying and neutering pets can prevent a lot of the shelters overrun. The operations are provided to each new resident as needed, and can cost up to $75, she said.
The shelter has a no-kill policy, so the animals can stay until they are adopted. It's often the first thing people ask when they call about surrendering a pet, according to Montgomery.
Mitcham said the shelter asks for a $40 donation when someone brings a new animal to the shelter to help cover the cost of care. People give the requested amount about half of the time, she said.
"People say, I just found this animal, and I don't have any money right now,' and we don't turn them away," Mitcham said.
Then, there are the pets left in a box at the shelter's door, a practice she warned against as inhumane.
Montgomery and Dennett noted that small kittens and puppies are often easiest to adopt out, but people don't take as easily to older animals.
Also, black cats and dogs are particularly hard to adopt out, according to Dennett, "probably because they are kind of plain and people overlook them."
Some of the shelter's long-staying residents, particularly those who were born there, become "institutionalized," thinking the shelter is home, according to Montgomery.
"What would happen to them if we had to close our doors?" she sad.
Mitcham said she didn't know.
"We don't want to think about what would happen to these animals (if the shelter closes), because we just have to make this work," Mitcham said.