When Hurricane Florence’s devastating rains flooded North Carolina in September, causing residents to flee, animal shelters and rescues faced enormous challenges to accommodate pets in need of safety from the storm.

Eleventh Hour Rescue, a New Jersey based nonprofit that saves cats and dogs from kill shelters, swung into action and took in dozens of pets from the storm region. Now, FoA is stepping in to help their efforts by providing 69 fully subsidized spay/neuter certificates.

The effort to help the rescue stems from FoA’s work with compassionate animal advocates who work to end pet homelessness.

“We have taken at least 70 dogs and cats over the past few weeks both before the storm to free up space and afterwards to make more room for the new intakes and strays,” said Alex Mirsky, a volunteer at Eleventh Hour. “Only three animals had been sterilized prior to us taking them so the certificates helped us extremely to offset the costs associated with getting the remaining animals spay and neutered.”

FoA has also been able to supply emergency, subsidized certificates to other nonprofits as a result of grants we have received from private foundations.

As a national leader in spay and neuter advocacy with its low-cost certificate program, FoA to date has helped facilitate more than 2.7 million spay and neuter procedures across the country.

“We’re pleased to help rescue efforts by animal advocates that insured that vulnerable dogs and cats were protected from the storm’s destruction,’’ said Friends of Animal’s president Priscilla Feral. “Spaying and neutering is one of FoA’s core missions and we will continue to support efforts to prevent dogs and cats from the being on the streets without homes.”