Furry Friends provided care for animals in West Des Moines since 2013 until 2023 when city leaders prevented Furry Friends from continuing this work and canceled our contract with the city. Before Furry Friends became involved in helping the city’s animals, city staff killed 68% of the cats that came in to the city shelter. While Furry Friends Refuge provided services for the city’s animals it was one of the safest communities for pets in the entire nation. Now, left with only overpaid city workers and a partnership involving around 60 dogs with another shelter, West Des Moines is an extremely dangerous community to be an animal in need. Furry Friends assisted up to 953 pets in just West Des Moines annually. Despite city staff having a budget of over half a million dollars they assist only a small fraction of the animals in need. For nearly 4 months in 2025, 4 full time city employees took in only a total of 8 cats despite there being hundreds in need. Residents who called are told the city will not help them with kittens they find at their homes in West Des Moines.
Why did the city cancel the contract with Furry Friends Refuge: Furry Friends stood up for a pet owner and her dog when the police chief discriminated and unlawfully declared the dog vicious despite such action being clearly in violation of the city’s ordinance. A judge ruled these actions were unlawful citing them as “arbitrary and capricious,” an extremely high burden indicating there was no logical basis or rational explanation for the city’s behavior. Rather than express concern about the actions of the police chief (who was put in place after the last chief cost millions of dollars in settlements for improper behavior), city leaders have instead retaliated against the shelter for standing up against this behavior. The mayor and all council members have refused to have any discussions regarding their decisions and are punishing animals in West Des Moines to send a message that whisteblowers will not be tolerated.
What you need to know: The city has no history of operating a safe shelter for animals. When it operated one prior to 2017, the vast majority of animals were killed in their care. Since they began operating one again in 2023, they failed to spend a single dollar on veterinary care or provide any vaccines in all of 2023 and 2024. They do not have sick or injured animals evaluated by a veterinarian and utilize city employees to provide lethal injections for animals without obtaining a diagnosis for medical conditions. An attempted partnership with another shelter failed just over a year after that shelter terminated its agreement with the city citing the costs of administering the program to assist cats too high. The city now just leaves cats on the streets despite a massive budget to help these animals. The city most recently issued an RFP (request for proposal) which claimed to allow shelters to bid on the right to be able to help cats in West Des Moines. The city staff, however, has severely limited any ability to help, requires shelters to post a bond of $2500 for the right to be able to assist the cats, and claims that there are only 25-30 cats annually in the entire city who will need adoption services. This is less than 10% of the true number of cats in West Des Moines who need assistance and can be adopted in to new loving homes if animal control operations were handled by an experienced and dedicated animal shelter.
What can you do to protect animals: contact your city council member and the mayor and tell them animals matter to you and that their decisions to put West Des Moines animals at risk and waste taxpayer dollars are unacceptable. Ask how your tax dollars are going to be spent responsibly to ensure the animals are not left on the streets, receive medical care and are safe. Kittens within the socialization window should not be left on the streets and should be taken in, socialized, and adopted. Cats and kittens at large in the community are the responsibility of the government and the city committed to maintaining the same high level of service provided by Furry Friends. Every single member of the current city council and the mayor have ignored dozens of pleas from West Des Moines residents who asked them to not cancel the contract with Furry Friends in 2023 and have since continued to ask them to stop wasting taxpayer dollars on ineffective services by city staff and invest in a dedicated shelter who provides comprehensive services. The following candidates are up for re-election this November. Read responses to questions about animal welfare from these candidates (or lack of response) here:
Mayor—Russ Trimble Opponent-MJ Hoag
Ward 1-Kevin Trevillyan Opponent-Jennie Doke-Kerns
Ward 3-Doug Loots unopposed
At-large: Renee Hardman unopposed
UPDATE November 2025:
UPDATE July 2025: We’ve seen the City of West Des Moines’ press release about a new request for proposals (RFP) issued on July 7. What the city didn’t mention is that they previously issued an RFP (submissions closed June 18th 2025) specifically for adoption services for West Des Moines cats and rejected all proposals including one from Furry Friends. The prior RFP gave city staff the power to decide which cats could be rescued and adopted. When asked how many cats actually need adoption services, staff estimated only 25–40 per year.
The new RFP changes very little. City staff still make all the decisions about which animals can be saved. Separating cats and kittens into different categories doesn’t change the fact that staff can continue blocking animals from being rescued. Many residents have raised concerns about city staff making these life-or-death choices—and unfortunately, past actions support that city staff should not be making these determinations. Here’s why:
Before Furry Friends began taking in stray cats directly, we helped the city with animals impounded at the old city shelter. When pressed for data, a heartbreaking fact was discovered: 68% of cats didn’t make it out alive. In response, Furry Friends offered to take all the city’s animals—cats, dogs, and others—at no cost.
In one instance, the city asked Furry Friends to take four cats. They agreed, scheduled a time for them to arrive, and had a medical team ready. The cats never came. They called repeatedly to check if the city needed help with transport. While repeatedly calling, the cats were killed. When we finally reached someone the next day, we were told: “We didn’t think you’d want those cats.”
Just this past week, a citizen found a kitten in West Des Moines needing urgent medical care. They brought the kitten to Furry Friends shelter, and called animal control. Over 30 minutes later, an officer returned the call and said they don’t accept animals from other shelters. They even questioned whether the citizen had really found the kitten, suggesting it might be a trick to make them take animals from “questionable sources.” In the end, they required the citizen to drive the kitten to the city shelter themselves.
When people find animals in need, they come to Furry Friends, not the city’s “holding facility” which is not open to the public and unmanned. By the end of our contract with the city in 2023, 80% of stray animals were coming directly to Furry Friends shelter—because city staff were did not want to be involved. The city has questioned whether these animals were truly from West Des Moines. This is a baseless concern. We documented where every animal was found and collected ID from the people who brought them in. The city has all of this information.
During the contract period, city staff were responsible for labeling animals as “feral.” They deemed 70% of cats and nearly all kittens feral (data available). Yet, paradoxically, they argued for over a decade that “almost no” feral cats existed in WDM—blocking TNR efforts. Their labels didn’t reflect the animals’ needs but served to justify what staff wanted to do. This week, a city officer even posted publicly that due to capacity issues, TNR is now the best option—highlighting a major shift in narrative.
Furry Friends spent 10 years pushing for a TNR ordinance to protect unsocialized cats (we have the emails to prove it). At one point, a city official—now assistant police chief—suggested the city should just kill feral cats again and not send them to the shelter. After the ordinance passed, officers refused to give the correct addresses of where feral cats were found, using the police department’s address instead. This made it impossible to return the cats as required—and then they blamed Furry Friends for not doing TNR. They also said Furry Friends three-day-a-week TNR services weren’t enough. Today, the city offers just one half-day of vet care each week for all impounded animals. That’s actually an improvement—because for most of the time the city ran its facility, they failed to provide or pay for vet care at all.
The mayor recently claimed the city terminated its contract with Furry Friends due to IDALS inspection reports and a dog bite involving a former employee. These claims are misleading.
Every contractor the city has worked with—including the city’s own holding facility—has had noncompliant items on IDALS reports. Furry Friends has always addressed and resolved any issues upon reinspection and has never had its license suspended—unlike other contractors the city has selected to work with. Noncompliant items for Furry Friends have included failing to sweep daily under cages, having dishes in the sink, failing to put away donations in the hallway and minor daily cleaning tasks. Distributing the over half a million dollar budget in an equitable manner would vastly improve the ability for the shelter to be deep cleaned.
The claim that the contract was ended over a dog bite at our facility or a refusal to euthanize is also inaccurate. Bite incidents have occurred at every organization the city has contracted with.
In reality, the city ended its contract with Furry Friends after the organization raised concerns about an improper declaration by the police chief regarding a citizen’s dog, as well as issues with new ordinance language. Though the city initially promised to address these concerns, it instead terminated the contract. That declaration was later found to be unlawful, and the city was court ordered to pay Furry Friends over $11,000.
Save WDM cats 