We were expecting this holiday season to go something like last year did. Between Christmas and New Year’s 2007, we had more than sixty cats at the boarding facility.
Our main boarding room and two isolation wards were full. The two isolation wards next door on the vet side of the building were full. Cats were tucked into the x-ray room, one of the exam rooms, and even the veterinarian’s office!
This year, we had plenty of reservations — enough that we started a waiting list shortly after Thanksgiving. But then the weather came in and foiled everybody’s plans.
As the storm dragged on, the cancellations continued. Everybody on the waiting list got a spot, only to have half of them cancel because their travel plans got snowed out. We ended up with around twenty cancellations in all — no full house problem this year!
The weather brought new challenges for the staff. Driving to work on unplowed roads. Forging through knee-high snow drifts to put out food for the feral cats. Shoveling a path so we could get to our garbage cans. Our clients have had some challenges in just getting to us! Some folks have been parking at the edge of the lot and hiking their cats back to our building (which is at the back of the parking lot).
We ended up extending our drop-off and pick-up hours to accommodate clients having trouble getting to us. Normally we have two hour “windows” in the morning and afternoon where cats can come in and go home — the rest of the day is quiet time for our guests. But with clients shoveling their way out of driveways or depending on friends with four wheel drive to get them on the road, we had to be flexible enough to wait.
We also had some unexpected guests — tens of thousands of people between Portland and Salem lost power thanks to the storm. So we saw a few emergency guests come in with an uncertain departure date.
All in all, the holiday season has been challenging once again. It’s just a new kind of challenge — one of flexibility instead of space limitations.