By DJ Palmer | Director of Operations
My name is DJ Palmer, and I am the Operations Director at Oregon Humane Society Salem campus. Thanks to your support, the team in Salem is able to provide spay and neuter surgeries for more than 1,000 community cats annually to help reduce stray overpopulation.
Still, we see stray cats now more than ever—in our neighborhoods, visiting our porches, and in our garden beds—and many of us worry.
This was true for Penelope, a local community member in Salem caring for an outgoing and affectionate stray cat whom she called Boris. Grumpy-faced Boris instantly connected with Penelope and her husband, charming them with his playful and sometimes sassy personality.
Was Boris getting the care he needed? Did he have an owner? How could she help him?
These worries nagged her, but Penelope knew best practice was to leave Boris in place and try to locate his owners, if he had any. In the meantime, she provided him with food and pleasant company when he visited.
However, during one visit Penelope noticed something was going wrong with Boris—his eyes were swollen with a leaky yellow discharge. After posting Boris in lost and found groups with no one stepping forward to claim him, she made the decision to bring him to OHS Salem campus for help.
Thanks to you, we’re able to give animals like Boris the same top-tier care that we would want for our own pets. For Boris, that meant corrective surgery for his eyes, dental care, and behavior modification to help him adjust to life as an indoor cat. After months of recovery and training, he was adopted into a loving home where he freely gives out scratchy kisses and loves to snuggle under the blankets. Because of you, this once-stray cat is healthy, no longer fending for himself outdoors, and is here to stay in a loving home.
Boris is just one of many. The work to support and stabilize the stray cat population is ongoing. Throughout Oregon, there are many counties that do not include cats in their stray animal ordinances. This has led to confusion about how long stray cats need to be held by an animal-serving agency like OHS before being placed for adoption.
Seeing the need to address this confusion and create a clear path for services, OHS began advocating for change at the state level. After years of hard work and collaboration with many groups, agencies, and donors like you, House Bill 3604 passed in May 2025—a huge win for cats! Thanks to your generosity and advocacy, stray cats across the entire state of Oregon have renewed hope for the future.
When HB3604 officially becomes law in September, stray cats will only need to be held at a shelter for 3-5 days before they are able to be placed for adoption—a vast improvement from the formerly varying guidelines, some of which required that cats be held for months before being adopted. But this also means more cats like Boris will be coming to our shelters in need of comprehensive care.
We want more cats to get their own happy stories like Boris, but we cannot do it without your support. Will you make a generous gift today to help us prepare as more stray cats come to our shelters?
For the animals,
DJ Palmer
Director of Operations - OHS Salem campus
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
