Resources
We strive to provide useful and cost effective resources to our fosters, adopters and our community.
Lost Pet Tips
Look Around
Look around the area where you pet was lost. Create LOST PET signs and hang them up during your search.
Share
Share your Petco Love Lost flier on social media platforms such as Facebook lost and found pet groups and Nextdoor.
What else can I do?
Reach out to family, friends and neighbors
80% of lost pets are found within a one mile radius of where they live. Ask family, friends and neighbors to help you search this radius.
Visit shelters
Visit your local animal shelters, humane society and/or animal control agency daily and monitor found reports online.
Found Pet Tips
Report the Pet
Report the pet you found on Petco Love Lost, along with a photo to make the pet visible to their family who may be searching for them.
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Alert Your Community
Contact your local animal shelters and vet offices to inform them that you’ve found a lost cat or dog. They may know who the pet belongs to. Post found pet flyers around the neighborhood, local library, coffee shops, etc.
Look for ID Tags
Check for tags on the pet’s collar and look for contact information. If there are no tags, take them to a Petco, vet, or shelter to scan for a microchip.
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Get Social
Share your Petco Love Lost flyer on social media platforms, especially lost and found pet pages local to you.
(or another in your area)
What else can I do?
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Be a "Good Samaritan"
A “Good Samaritan”, in relation to lost pets, is a person who sees a companion animal, stops what they’re doing, and helps the animal. in need. In the past, the most common way to help a lost pet was to take them to an animal shelter with hopes their owner would come and look for them. With today's technology, we no longer have to take animals to the shelter to help them get home. For healthy, friendly pets, it’s often better for them to get home without ever being taken to an animal shelter, where they may get sick and where their chances of getting home are actually lower than if they are kept within the community they came from. Most people still believe the best way to help is to take a lost animal to the shelter and drop it off. In order for this mindset to change, we need to educate our communities that there is indeed a better way.
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Find a cat?
Not all cats are stray and the cat you found may not be. Some cats happily consider the outdoors their home and would not do well inside. If you have found a healthy cat in your area, they may belong to one of your neighbors that allow their cat to be an indoor/outdoor cat. If you notice a cat's left ear tip has been snipped, they are most likely a community cat that has been spayed/neutered and vaccinated. To learn more about TNR (trap, neuter, return) efforts, visit the Iowa Humane Alliance Community Cat page or the Education section of our Services page.
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Find baby kittens?
LET THEM BE! Even if you find kittens by themselves, most likely, their mother is nearby. A momma cat is her kittens’ best possible caregiver, so please…Let Them Be. Allowing the momma cat to care for her kittens in their outdoor home gives them the best chance at a healthy life. Learn more about this here, at Alley Cat Allies.
Additional Resources
The IHA Regional Spay/Neuter Clinic is Iowa’s first non-profit high-quality, high-volume, low-cost spay/neuter clinic operating on a daily basis.
They offer additional services such as vaccines, microchips, transportation to our clinic, and general pet supplies to individuals during their annual Community Pet Festivals.
Affordable pet vaccination clinics located at your neighborhood Petco store. They offer several other services as well, such as microchipping, heartworm prevention and even a variety of prescriptions.
CVHS is a regional leader in helping at-risk families with pets stay together. In the last two years, the shelter has helped over 8,000 animals that might otherwise be surrendered to a shelter through its low-cost vaccine clinics and free pet food bank.
Website Accessibility Statement
A Purposeful Life Animal Rescue & Sanctuary is committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability. We aim to adhere as closely as possible to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0, Level AA), published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These guidelines explain how to make Web content more accessible for people with disabilities. Conformance with these guidelines will help make the web more user friendly to everyone. Whilst A Purposeful Life Animal Rescue & Sanctuary strives to adhere to the guidelines and standards for accessibility, it is not always possible to do so in all areas of the website and we are currently working to achieve this. Be aware that due to the dynamic nature of the website, minor issues may occasionally occur as it is updated regularly. We are continually seeking out solutions that will bring all areas of the site up to the same level of overall web accessibility.
If you have any comments and or suggestions relating to improving the accessibility of our site, please don't hesitate to contact our Accessibility Coordinator, Sadie Sell, at sadie@aplanimalrescue.org. Your feedback will help us make improvements.