Bobby Keys: [00:00:00] welcome back to KC cares,Kansas city’snon project voice telling the stories of Kansas city nonprofits on Bobby
Ruth Bigus: [00:00:13] Vegas. And we are back at the library or at the library or another, another monthly session down here. It’s great. That’s right.
And we just,we had. The first of all, it’s beautiful here.As we always say.
We didn’t get a chance to talk about it earlier because we had the, we had the,
the man, mr man. There were drinkers. The Kauffman foundation. Yeah. But yeah, we, we’re back down here and a beautiful library.
They don’t, they don’t want us to be quiet anymore. They don’t want us to talk and be loud and communicateand talk to more nonprofits, especially no fines.
So you can come down, just write a book, watch the show. . Hopefully return your book on time, but you won’t be fine. What better deal is there than that?
Roshan Parris: [00:00:54] Except
Ruth Bigus: [00:00:54] for who we have. I’m so excited
Tori Fugate: [00:00:56] because. They’ve been doing.
Ruth Bigus: [00:00:58] KC pet project has been doing tremendous things and we are so lucky to have Chorey few gate here with us with no animal, though.
Tori Fugate: [00:01:06] I know I couldn’t bring one into the library
Ruth Bigus: [00:01:08] and we weren’t sure about that. We thought, yeah, we, we, we were a little afraid that we would have a spoiler alert and we have Roche and Paris who is everywhere doing everything. But her context being here today is, she was the co-chair of raise the woof. I did say that, correct?
Roshan Parris: [00:01:25] Yes. You did indeed the
Ruth Bigus: [00:01:27] tremendous fundraising effort that has allowed this beautiful new campus to open. That is awesome. So we want to hear all about it and bring us up to date with KC pet project. Nothing like a whole .
Tori Fugate: [00:01:45] Not there to crack. Oh my goodness. We have had the craziest few months since I’m opening the campus.
So we had our big transition where we actually had to move animals, from the old shelter on Raytown road to our new shelter at, Elmwood and Gregory and Swope park. And, we had to move. It was around 200 animals, a two 50, just a couple of days after Christmas. And that was a huge undertaking.
But we had help from the mayor who was great and transported some animals. The Kansas city, Missouri police department, Brittany Matthews, Joe Lauria with Fox. Four. We had a lot of, helpers as we, you know, moved all these animals over and officially opened the doors of the Kansas city campus for animal care on January 1st and then we had our big grand opening and ribbon cutting on the 24th.
but there has not been really a normal week since we’ve moved in. We’ve had a lot going on other than the campus opening, but, it is, it’s truly a remarkable facility. If you’ve not had the opportunity to come by and see it, we’re in. Beautiful Swope park. and it’s just been, a wonderful change for the animals as well as the people of Kansas city, Missouri.
Ruth Bigus: [00:02:54] Give us a little bit, kind of the highlights of the campus, and then I would love for Rosh Hashanah, then jump in and talk about, you know, why a campus, why was this so needed in our community?
Tori Fugate: [00:03:07] There’s so many highlights that make this truly a unique facility. we went around to all of the. Big shelters that are brand new around the country and benchmarked.
And we’ve learned a lot from them of what they loved about their facilities and what they hated and wished they would have done differently and brought back all that knowledge. And then we feel like we’ve elevated it for this shelter in Kansas city. so you’ll find that we have, separate housing used to, in the old shelter, we had animals that were literally stacked on top of each other in cages.
All the dogs were in one room. Cats were in office spaces. It just was not at all conducive to the amount of animals that we have coming in. And it was highly stressful. Now we have 15 dogs in dog districts, and they’re logging districts, stogy districts, and beautiful bright colored kennels with glass fronts.
No more bars. at this campus, cats have catio spaces that are indoor, outdoor spaces that they’re just absolutely loving. A lot of community rooms where we have a lot of cats that are looking for homes in one room. And. You know, adopters can go in and actually meet several cats at once. we have a state of the art veterinary clinic that is, truly doing remarkable things already.
We’ve already seen a reduction of, animals that are on medicine for things like stress, kennel cough, upper respiratory illness, things like that. We’ve already seen a 40% reduction since we’ve
Ruth Bigus: [00:04:25] moved. That’s
Roshan Parris: [00:04:26] incredible.
Tori Fugate: [00:04:27] To the new shelter, which is exactly the, the hope that we had when building the facility.
and then of course, this beautiful atrium with a retail space. We have a roastery coffee shop in the
Ruth Bigus: [00:04:39] little sneak peak. Yes. Mr Danny will be our. Final segment. So she’ll shout out there, shameless
Tori Fugate: [00:04:46] over there. So yeah, it’s a, it’s a, you can come in and just grab a coffee if you wanted to. So it’s much more than just an adoption center.
it’s truly a campus feeling where you can come in and we have an education pavilion that’s very, very busy and active already. There’s just so much happening there. So, it’s really great to get involved. Well,
Ruth Bigus: [00:05:03] Shan, you’ve been behind the scenes working on this for quite a while. Tell us a little bit about the journey.
Roshan Parris: [00:05:08] Eight years and four months precise. I got literally a middle of the night email from someone who knew someone who heard. I was, I was an animal lover and, Adele hall and I, very quickly pulled together a group of people in the chamber board room. which included animal welfare agencies from throughout the region.
Gary at the university of Missouri was very helpful and bringing together, that’s from both K-State state and AMU to look at the situation very quickly. And, a number of civic leaders, very generous civic leaders jumped in and said, how can we help? we knew that one of the things they most needed at the time was a vet clinic because they were literally operating out of a closet.
This was an old reconverted. Warehouse from the Arrowhead days when Arrowhead was originally built, it had been condemned for over 15 years by the state of Missouri. Tory is thoughtful in the way that she describes the circumstances they were living in, but it was just absolutely breathtaking for all that Kansas city values in terms of making it an extraordinary place to attract young people and extraordinary place to live and work.
This was the precise. opposite of anything. We as two legged citizens of Kansas city would want for our four legged citizens. And so, we set about the journey of first getting them some emergency care. We asked a construction team to come in and look at what it would take to just get a mobile vet clinic in some, trailers.
And, they quickly got to work. And within a matter of months, we had a ribbon cutting for a vet clinic. And day after day, week after week, I asked them for an estimate because we hadn’t raised a dime yet for this. And on the day that the mayor and city council members and civic leaders came and cut the ribbon, I very nervously stepped over to the construction team and said.
You know, you did something that exceeded expectations. Here I need, I need a budget. This is really scary. And, and the head of the, the actual owner of the company looked at me and he said, when I said, don’t worry about it. I mean, don’t worry about it. And that became the narrative of Kansas city is that when I went to H and T and said, could they help us with just a little bit of a design so that we understood what we would take to the voters for a huge geo bond campaign.
We needed a budget. And they sat down and started working with us. Obviously no one in this region had ever designed an animal care campus and animal shelter. And, month after month, we met and I finally said to the president of the architectural division, I promised you I’d let you stop at the point that, that.
You know, we needed to figure it out, how to pay you. And he said, I’ve got the biggest problem. I’ve got a team of people working on this. They won’t stop. They can’t stop. And so it went. Eventually, obviously they come on board as our architect and story after story like that. It was just a really extraordinary story of generosity in this community and one that has now created what I will say, because I know it to be true.
Even though, again, Tory humbly won’t. It is the nation’s most state of the art animal care campus. we are doing things there that no other shelter, no other campus is doing. we’re very connected to the animal welfare community and we know that we’re being somewhat humble about it because we hope.
That in a minute, somebody bests us, but we know that it takes many years as it did here to be able to bring voters together in a community together to, to create a vision that exceeded really all of our expectations. So we call it the house that love built, and it is definitely that every single day we crossed the threshold.
Ruth Bigus: [00:08:39] Let’s talk about the day to day. Now that you’re in this new facility, what does that. Look like?
Tori Fugate: [00:08:47] Well, it’s a lot better, obviously for the staff than the old facility and the animals. you know, we really built it with the staff in mind and how animals would flow through the building. We wanted to, you know, cut down on things like, you know, walking through the vet clinic if you didn’t have to and you may have, you know, disease or anything like that.
you know, there was a lot of focus that went into having. Areas where staff can just be all the time and they don’t really have to leave that area and how the animals flow through the building to reduce illness and things like that, that you see a lot in shelters. And so animals are in these bright rooms with a lot of natural light.
There’s music playing when you walk in, used to, when you walked in the dog area, the decibel level alone was the same level as Arrowhead stadium we measured at once. It was, Oh my gosh, it’s loud. That’s
Ruth Bigus: [00:09:36] a lot of yapping dogs.
Tori Fugate: [00:09:37] Arrowhead stadium, and you can imagine what that stress is like on the animals today.
You walk in and if there’s one dog barking, you’re like, what’s he barking about? You know? It’s just,
Ruth Bigus: [00:09:46] it’s,
Roshan Parris: [00:09:46] there’s beautiful music behind. I mean, it’s just Zen.
Tori Fugate: [00:09:49] It is.
Ruth Bigus: [00:09:51] I know there’s a lot of research that. Dogs respond in our column to by classical music, which is wild. Maybe we should play it everywhere.
Well, I’ll be more calm.
Tori Fugate: [00:09:59] I think we are. I think it applies to humans too, right? Absolutely. you know, we have outdoor play yards so that adopters can go out and meet with them animals and these lovely players. We have indoor meet and greet rooms. Before, if you wanted to meet an animal and it was raining out, you had to go outside with the animal in the rain.
And here I’m, you know, you can meet them inside. And these meet and greet rooms. so just day to day operations are just so much better in volunteers. We have. A wait list of people who want to volunteer at
Ruth Bigus: [00:10:28] the right. Did everybody hear that? I’ll wait. List of volunteers. That’s amazing. Happy.
Tori Fugate: [00:10:33] It is a very happy problem, right?
Ruth Bigus: [00:10:35] Yeah. You need a dog though. We’ve already discussed that.
Tori Fugate: [00:10:43] We have tophi. We have coffee, we have dogs. What more could you want? and you know, it’s, it’s a lovely problem to have. We have a lot of more people who are wanting to foster and do things like dog day outs now because it’s so much easier to take them out.
which is a wonderful program that we absolutely love. We have our community education pavilion that is booked almost every single day with people who are coming in to take classes at the campus, whether it’s, you know, training classes on how to be a volunteer, things like that. but we have, businesses that have had strategic, yeah.
Planning sessions. That
Ruth Bigus: [00:11:13] doesn’t have to be dog-related.
Tori Fugate: [00:11:15] No, we have event rental opportunities. We’ve had birthday parties already. we even have a woman. Girl Scouts. Yeah. So many girls, Scouts
Roshan Parris: [00:11:23] and cities. I mean,
Ruth Bigus: [00:11:25] did the birthday
Tori Fugate: [00:11:26] party, did they, did they leave with a puppy? They did not leave with a puppy, but she was so sweet.
she collected donations instead of. Gifts for herself, for her birthday party. And so all of her friends brought supplies for the shelter. We brought a dog in so that they could all all interact at the shelter dog. and as you’re in this room where our community education pavilion is, you’re just overlooking these breathtaking views of Swope park.
You can see dogs on walks with staff and volunteers. It’s just such a lovely setting around our pond. We do have a pond. It’s just, it’s
Ruth Bigus: [00:12:00] how do you keep the dogs out of the pond? That’s what I want to know. Ah, there you go. There you go. Bottom line though, since moving into this fabulous space and with great effort by the whole community and great leadership.
What’s going on with adoptions? Are you seeing more adoptions? Because of the change of the environment?
Tori Fugate: [00:12:23] We are seeing an uptake in adoptions, which is great. we have a lot more people who are just coming to see the campus and then they meet somebody and fall in love with them. Saturdays are very, very busy at the campus, which is wonderful.
unfortunately, the other piece of it is that we’re also seeing a massive increase. In pets coming in from the public, from, we have our admissions side, so we still provide all the lost and found services for Kansas city, Missouri. if somebody is looking for a stray pet, things like that, or if they have to owner surrender their pet, right.
that is still happening. We’ve seen 155% increase.
Ruth Bigus: [00:12:57] Why? Because. People feel their pet will be in a better place.
Tori Fugate: [00:13:01] That’s a lot of it. We saw that a lot when we took over operations of the old shelter. you know, our first year we care for, I think it was around 6,000 animals, 67,000 or 6,700 animals.
Incredible. And then right, and then by a year two, we were at 10,000. So. Last year we were at 11,000, and it just continues to increase. And so, you know, we had the small animals that all came in. It was almost 300 animals from one home. So our February numbers were very large. and, but these are, these are trends that are worrisome.
And so we know that there’s a lot of work that we have to do as far as getting out into the community, figuring out ways that people can keep their pets in their home. And that is, now that we’re in the campus, we can start to build and expand on those programs, which is very exciting.
Roshan Parris: [00:13:47] You know, one of the things that’s, that’s most important to understand is that Kansas city, when we got involved in this, almost eight and a half years ago, we had the third largest, no kill shelter.
And, no, no kill open admission shelter in America. And when I would share that in. Remarks, speeches, et cetera. People would say, Oh, wow, that’s great. Third largest, and I’d say it’s precisely the opposite. You don’t want to be the city. Our size in particular should not have a problem. That is that significant.
And what we have learned over time and what the education pavilion community education pavilion seeks to help raise awareness around is that our crime rate. Is inextricably tied to our, our animal welfare and, and animal abuse rate. Unfortunately, unfortunately, abuse often starts at the animal, an animal.
And so when you look at child abuse, when you look at spousal abuse, even elder abuse, there are some staggering statistics that show that it starts with animals and the behavior goes on from there. So the fact that we are living today in such a significant time of. Of crime and something that our mayor deals with every day.
there is absolutely a link to what we’re trying to do on this campus. Again, I’ve said it many, many times. This is not a four legged problem. This is a two legged problem and it’s one that we together can, can hopefully change for the future if we’re able to educate this generation next generations around best practices, not only in the way you treat animals, but in the way we treat each other.
Ruth Bigus: [00:15:16] So how many dogs have you adopted since you’ve been involved with this Russian? I mean, I know you were all sitting around this table as animal lovers.
Roshan Parris: [00:15:26] Well, I will say that we have gotten deeply involved in, in some wonderful placements. we have, a cap in our community for three, and we have three.
Tori Fugate: [00:15:36] we are
Roshan Parris: [00:15:37] playing by the rules. They come, they come each year to certify that we are, happy and safe home for our animals. But, you know, w Jeff and I do feel that we have, we have adopted 10,000, and, we are. We, we never realized how much it would capture our hearts, but we remained deeply committed to the two legged community.
but the foreleg community also has
Ruth Bigus: [00:15:58] steals your heart. Tory. How can people get in touch to come out and tour, to adopt, to volunteer? Even
Roshan Parris: [00:16:04] though you have a wait list,
Tori Fugate: [00:16:06] go to our website@kcpetproject.org. You’ll find all the information that you need on there and you can actually start volunteer. I start volunteering right on our website, by watching a video and you can sign up to be a foster.
It’s super easy, and everything you needed on our website. pet project.org.
Ruth Bigus: [00:16:22] Thanks so much for sharing this exciting news for our animal world. Thanks
Tori Fugate: [00:16:26] for
Roshan Parris: [00:16:26] letting us .
