Impact Statement

Every cat deserves a chance at a safe, loving home.

We’re saving lives and finding cats homes because of your support. We served 14,834 people with animals – a 10% increase from our previous year. This is in part thanks to our generous volunteers who donated 11,011 hours of their time, valued at over $363,000!

Adoption Program Recap

With your help, we found homes for 1,332 stray cats, This also means that each cat’s time at the shelter is shrinking and they are finding homes quicker and quicker. The average time it takes a cat to get adopted at SAFE Haven is 20 days (after a one-week isolation period).

We attribute this success to our adopters, volunteer adoption counselors, special groups of behavior experts (the Cat Enrichment crews), and life-saving fosters.

SAFE Care Clinic Program Recap

SAFE Care Spay/Neuter Clinic specializes in helping the public with pets, strays, and feral cats. The goal: to spay and neuter as many cats and kittens as we can every day, to reduce the euthanasia of healthy animals.

Last year, the Clinic performed 8,043 surgeries on cats and dogs from 58 counties in North Carolina. That’s an increase of 10% from the previous year. Why? Because it’s one of only a handful of low-cost clinics like it in the entire state.

More than 57,000 animals have been spayed or neutered at the SAFE Care Clinic since it opened in 2001. If they had produced even two kittens each, they would have added 245,000 stray cats to the Triangle in only two years. In 2021 in the Triangle and surrounding counties, 30% of cats entering the shelter system were euthanized. (NC Department of Agriculture, Veterinary Division, Animal Welfare Section, Animal Welfare Reports.)

Quick Facts:

7,930 sterilizations were performed this year

46 counties in NC were served by the clinic in 2024/2024

The Clinic is licensed by the NC Veterinary Board

SAFE Haven helps other rescue groups and shelters to make sure more cats get sterilized before adoption. This past year, they sterilized 2,650 cats and kittens as a vital service to 19 rescue groups and humane societies. Previous organizations we’ve helped include: Alley Cats & Angels, Beautiful Together, Best Friend Pet Adoption, Franklin County Animal Services, FCAS / Paws for Life, Marden’s Cat Tales, Friends of Wake County, the SPCA of Franklin County, Paw Prints Rescue, Purr Partners, Purrfect Hearts, Second Chance Pet Adoptions and Neshama Animal Rescue.

SAFE Haven’s TNVR Mission

“Un-owned or semi-owned community cats number between 30 to 40 million in the U.S. Only 2% of them are sterilized.” (Managing Community Cats, HSUS, 2014.) How many community or feral cats do we have in the Triangle? According to experts, a mid-range formula is 10% of the human population. The current population of the Triangle is 1.3 million people. We are the 16th fastest-growing region in the nation. That would be 130,000 cats.

Through aggressive and mostly free services, with your help, we have sterilized and vaccinated 2,908 feral cats and kittens this past year. You will notice a change from TNR to TNVR. This is to emphasize what has always been true: that these services include a Rabies (and distemper) vaccine. In helping government officials and others accept TNVR we emphasize this important requirement.

SAFE Haven supports our community in many other ways to help feral cats:

• Loan of humane traps and training/support to safely catch elusive cats
• Classes: Basics of TNVR
• Management of the TNRWake feral cat registry. Confidential, third-party registry that can help you reclaim a feral cat in Wake County
• Free food for feral colony managers
• Home of Operation Catnip, the Triangle’s oldest feral cat sterilization program. Housed one Sunday a month at SAFE Haven, OC sterilizes about 700 cats a year.

SAFE Haven is successful because of individual donations

Donations are vital to our organization since adoption fees do not cover the basic medical care of the cats SAFE Haven takes into our shelter. And as a “No Kill” shelter, we believe in treating every medical condition we can – just like you do for your beloved pets. You may not know it, but as a private nonprofit animal shelter we do not get any funds from the City of Raleigh, Wake County, or the State of North Carolina. Because it is of the utmost importance we continue to offer no-cost or low-cost sterilization services to every person/cat in our community who needs it, the support of our donors is vital to this mission. Several hundred cats who use the spay/neuter services of the clinic have never been to a veterinarian. Were it not for the availability of these services, many cats would go unneutered and hundreds of homeless kittens would be born.

Thanks to 7,165 gifts from compassionate animal people, SAFE Haven met our financial goals this past fiscal year. Additionally, we successfully managed our expenses and benefited from the donated time from our volunteers as well as donations of supplies.

The Pet Food Pantry

The Pantry is the only one of its kind in Wake County. Last year, we fed 1,139 cats, 539 dogs, helping 484 families by providing over 17 tons of food.

Take a virtual tour of the SAFE Haven shelter via this video: