ABOUT STAY-A-WHILE CAT SHELTER
Mission Statement:
Stay-A-While Cat Shelter is a cage-less, no kill shelter that provides loving, compassionate and comprehensive care for cats and kittens awaiting adoption.
Who We Are:
Stay-A-While is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to sheltering, caring for and placing cats into life-long homes. We are located in North Royalton, Ohio. Our cats enjoy roaming free in large rooms in a spacious, ranch home situated on an acre lot, which has an abundance of trees and wildlife. Stay-A-While is a no-kill shelter as we do not euthanize cats except for hopeless health reasons. We are a small, private shelter with approximately 80-100 cats/kittens and we are only able to accept new residents when vacancies become available.
We provide a safe and loving environment for cats and kittens until they can adopt caring people of their own. Once a cat is accepted into the shelter, it is given a medical examination, tested for Feline Leukemia Virus, Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, and given initial vaccinations. Cats over six months of age are spayed or neutered before adoption.
The shelter is administered by an Advisory Board and is operated and maintained by a Director of Operations, Assistant Director, and several Operations Assistants, plus a staff of volunteers who carry out a myriad of functions.
We are privately funded from the generosity of cat lovers through donations, adoption fees, and various fund-raising activities.
Our History
“Bide-A-Wee Cat Shelter” now known as “Stay-A-While Cat Shelter” was started by a caring couple and their friends in 1981 in Hinckley, Ohio. Their dream was to create a no-kill, cage-less shelter where strays and abandoned felines could stay in a safe, loving environment until being placed in a forever home. Those cats who were not adopted would then spend their life in the home-like and loving setting. Bide-A-Wee, which is Scottish for “Stay Awhile”, moved to 8800 Akins Road in North Royalton, Ohio in 1984.
In 2003, the Bide-A-Wee naming rights were challenged by an outside organization. In the best interests of the shelter, a new name was chosen in the fall of 2003 by holding a raffle and the winner was “Stay-A-While”.