WASILLA -- The Mat-Su Borough animal shelter euthanized 33 cats last month after the animals got sick from a measure meant to improve their health.

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Bob Haskell

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The borough spent $5 million to replace its 25-year-old, hard-to-clean, overcrowded animal shelter. Among other things, the new shelter that opened in March was built to reduce disease among the lost or abandoned pets that sometimes spend several weeks at the shelter.

Borough officials point out their new shelter is a major success if you look at the big picture. Adoption and return-to-owner rates for cats and dogs are up and length of stay is down, according to borough statistics. Perhaps more important, as far as Borough Animal Care Chief Bob Haskell is concerned, euthanasia rates have dropped, particularly among animals that once would have been killed for being at the shelter for too long when there was not enough space to keep them.

The disease outbreak occurred after the shelter created an exercise room for the cats to respond to complaints from local rescue groups that the cats needed more time out of their cages, Haskell said.

After staffers let the cats out together in a little-used room next to the cattery, the animals contracted upper respiratory disease. The easily spread illnesses are a risk at any shelter, but one exacerbated by stress and overcrowding, according to research posted on the Web site for the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

The 33 cats euthanized in October represented nearly all the cats at the shelter at the time, Haskell said.

Judy Price, one of the cat rescuers who suggested the exercise room, said the room itself wasn't the root cause of the illness outbreak last month.

Instead, Price blames the outbreak on the small size of the cages in the shelter's cattery -- roughly 4.5 square feet, including a litter box. Only some cages in the cattery have shelves inside to give the cats a little more space, though more shelves are on the way. One kitten was sleeping in its litter box during a visit to the shelter last week.

The cages are too small to house cats humanely for a long time, leaving them more vulnerable to disease because the stress of confinement wears down their immune system, said Price, a Talkeetna resident who founded Clear Creek Cat Rescue a few months ago.

"The cats would be healthier and less likely to get ill if they weren't so stressed out in those tiny cages," she said.

Haskell said the cages at the shelter are big enough to allow the cats "to exercise all their breed-specific movements," such as stretching out their front and back legs.

They have plenty of room to lie down, he said.

For comparison, the Anchorage Animal Care and Control Center uses a range of cage sizes to house cats, with the smallest cages measuring 28 inches by 27 inches, or 5.25 square feet.

But each cat gets two of those smaller cages, "partially for ease of cleaning and to give them a little different space," said animal control spokeswoman Brooke Taylor. "One has their litter box, their bed, a little shelving thing to sit on. The lower one just has paper, with toys, cat grass."

Officials at the Mat-Su shelter say they don't have many options when it comes to bigger cat cages.

The cattery room is only so big, Haskell said. If the shelter did switch to bigger cat cages, it would have to reduce the total number of cages and therefore the number of cats the shelter could house. That would mean fewer cats adopted, more cats euthanized.

The existing cattery cages meet federal standards, while the frequency of fresh-air exchange in the room exceeds ASPCA recommendations, the chief said.

The cages are considered "short-term housing," he said, with cats inside for an average of 20 days, 30 at the most. A number of the kennels at the cattery have trap doors allowing two cages to be made out of one, though that's not an option when the shelter is up to capacity on cats, as it is now.

Staffers put bigger cats and families in large metal cages from the old shelter.

Volunteers and staff do take out the cats individually for play time and socialization.

"Would we like the cages bigger? Of course," Haskell said. "What's the alternative? The alternative is euthanasia. If they're in a decent-sized cage, a clean environment for 20 days, the short term is better than the alternative."

Find Zaz Hollander online at adn.com/contact/zhollander or call 352-6711.

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