SUMTER, S.C. — A dance group in Sumter is working to support local animal rescues as they work to serve the community. The Sumter Shag Club meets once a week to teach people South Carolina's state dance. This week, they did something special.
On Wednesday, club members dropped off truck-fulls of donations to shelters.
“It is an absolutely huge problem,” Windy Ridge Rescue Volunteer Mark Williams explained about stray cats. ”I didn't realize how bad the problem was until I started volunteering. And it's like, once you, you know, you start working with a cat and you go out in the city, you just start seeing cats everywhere. It's something that a lot of people, myself included, didn't notice until I started looking into the problem.”
Now the local dance group is hoping to be a part of the solution.
“These rescues, they really work hard to take care of animals and try to find them homes, so we just want to support them as best we can,” Sumter Shag Club President Whit Blanton said. “My mom and dad were big shaggers, so I learned it at a young age. I pass it on. It's our state dance. And I think everybody, especially that lives in South Carolina, needs to learn it.”
Members meet once a week to dance. On Tuesday, they were swinging to the music. Now, they’re swinging bags of food, filling up empty storage closets for Windy Ridge and Saving Sumter’s Strays.
Blanton says the organization raised over $1,200 at their last meeting and filled two car trunks with pet supplies from food to litter. Blanton and other members dropped off the donations at the two shelters.
Windy Ridge Rescue aims to reduce the overpopulation of cats in the area through it’s Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Release (TNVR) Program.
In 2023, the rescue says it TNVR’d 792 feral cats and found homes for 396 friendly cats. Right now, Williams says they have 180 animals being fostered.
“It is absolutely huge to have help from the community,” Williams shared.
“There's a lot of places out there that are…it’s all they can do just to get money to get by so we try to help them,” Blanton said.
According to the American Bird Conservancy, outdoor cats kill about 2.4 billion birds every year in the United States alone. There are millions of abandoned and feral cats in the US, which the American Veterinary Medical Association says often die from disease and starvation while causing wildlife destruction and a threat to public health through spreading rabies and viral, fungal, bacterial and parasitic diseases.
The Sumter Shag Club meets every Tuesday evening at the Quality Inn. For more information, you can visit its Facebook group.