Rabies Shots For Rockland Shelter, School Caregivers After Kitten Dies

ROCKLAND COUNTY, NY — A 4-week-old kitten fostered out by the RG Cares Animal Shelter to a local school with an animal care program died of rabies, and now the school and the shelter are working with the Rockland County Health Department to give the rabies vaccine to those who came in contact with it.

Cat rescue agency Four Legs Good is running the RG Cares Animal Shelter under a short-term contract with Rockland Green, the county's waste and animal-care authority, which had its charter amended in 2022 to allow it to also handle animal control.

The Summit School at Nyack offers day and residential education and support programs as a special education secondary school. Its program Pets for Purpose gives the children opportunities to care for animals, take on responsibilities, and spend time outdoors.

The kitten was one of three too young to be vaccinated being fostered at the school. Rabies vaccines are typically given to cats at 12 to 16 weeks.

"Little kittens are often fostered out of a shelter to give them a better chance of survival," Dawn Bernstein of Four Legs Good told Patch. Baby kittens need to be fed around the clock. Bernstein herself spent hours bottle-feeding the kitten, which was medically cleared before she was placed in foster care. The kitten was never diagnosed with animal bites; the veterinarian's discharge paperwork indicated abscesses.

"You could see she had some injuries, but there was no sign of anything serious," Bernstein said. "She was drinking from the bottle, she was happy and playful."

Then the kitten became ill and died at a local animal hospital. The other two are back at RG Cares, in isolation.

At the school in Upper Nyack, roughly 90 students and staff members were undergoing the series of rabies vaccines, CBS News New York reported. Patch requested but had not received a statement from the school before this article was published. It will be updated.

Bernstein has also begun the series of shots. She said county health officials had been efficient and cooperative. "They are exceptional."

Rabies is an infectious disease that affects the central nervous system in mammals. People usually get it from the bite of a rabid animal, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Some types of contact, such as petting a rabid animal or contact with the blood, urine or feces of a rabid animal, are not associated with risk for infection. It is possible, but rare, for people to get rabies from non-bite exposures, which can include scratches, abrasions, or open wounds that are exposed to saliva or other potentially infectious material from a rabid animal.

"I don’t want anyone to be afraid to rescue and save an animal," Bernstein told Patch.

While rabies is rare in people in the United States, with only 1 to 3 cases reported annually, about 60,000 Americans who've been exposed get the post-exposure series of 2-4 shots, the CDC said. It's a myth that the treatment requires 20 or more painful shots to the stomach with a "monstrously long needle," the National Library of Medicine points out.

In a statement, the New York state Department of Health said, in part, "Human rabies does not have a treatment and is almost always fatal, which is why vaccine and human rabies immune globulin is in the best interest of anyone exposed."

Rabies testing requires that the animal be euthanized. To check for rabies, the test must include tissue from at least two locations in the brain, the CDC said.

RG Cares is currently at the old, overcrowded, decrepit animal shelter formerly known as the Hi-Tor Animal Care Shelter, at 65 Firemen's Memorial Drive in Pomona. Cares stands for Center for Animal Rescue and Educational Services.

Hi-Tor was the only animal care and control shelter in Rockland, taking in more than 2,500 animals each year. The County of Rockland had traditionally provided some funding to and made county facilities available to Hi-Tor for animal control and care. The shelter was run by a small staff augmented by volunteers and supported through fundraising and contracts with municipalities for animal control.

But it suffered for years from overcrowding and underfunding, in a facility basically unchanged since 1972. It also suffered from lack of resources and infighting. A new larger facility was to be built using county, state and private funds (a ceremonial groundbreaking event was held in October 2021); but the plan was scrapped when town officials expressed concerns about Hi-Tor's operations and competence.

The board of Rockland Green, which had been founded in 1994 to handle waste recovery, disposal and prevention for the county, saw an opportunity to expand and received approval from the Rockland County Legislature and New York State Legislature.

The Rockland County government's involvement in local animal control came to an end. The boards of Hi-Tor and Rockland Green signed a contract under which Rockland Green was to increase the taxes it levies to cover $1.4 million for the shelter and $225,000 for a lease on a planned new shelter location in Haverstraw, the Rockland Business Journal reported.

The current shelter manager is Michael Sanducci, who had managed Hi Tor until he was ousted in 2018 for complaining about lack of essentials including support and money from the shelter's board — which offered justifications that infuriated the previous board's president.

Sanducci was brought back by RG Cares after Rockland Green fired Hi-Tor's executive director, board members, and staff in September.

Meanwhile, the operation limps on at the old facility in Pomona.