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The Mower County Humane Society is currently attempting to raise funds that will allow it to add onto its outdoor cat area.

The Humane Society has raised around a third of the estimated $70,000 to $72,000 needed to build on to the “catio,” which when completed will give the cats more space to explore but also help volunteers with their chores.

“It’s not so much of an expansion overall,” said Humane Society President Jay Lutz, who added that this expansion was never really planned, but rather it just kind of came up. “We need some extra space when we’re cleaning kennels.”

The current catio set-up is located on the north end of the building, and will be expanded around the northwest corner of the Humane Society, going down the west side of the building for 75 feet.

While the extra space is important for volunteers to better and more efficiently clean the area, giving cats more space outside is equally important.

“It’s always nice,” Lutz said. “We try to get them out every day to run loose as much as we can. All of that space, the bird feeders and cat trees add to the stimulation of getting them outside.”

Aside from the outdoor catio addition, there will also be more enclosures added and more bird feeders installed outdoors.

Currently, the Humane Society has around 120 cats, which sounds like a lot but is actually down from post COVID numbers where state mandates prohibited spaying and neutering resulting in a spike of cat numbers at the Humane Society to the 130-140 cat range.

If you would like to help donate to the Humane Society’s catio expansion, visit: https://mchs.rescuegroups.org for more details.

Construction is expected to start in the near future and be concluded later this year.