Every pet deserves a second chance. This Giving Tuesday, you can give one.

Since 2020, Lifeline of Galveston County has worked so that no pet in our county is euthanized because there’s no room. This year alone, more than 760 dogs and cats have gone home with new families through Lifeline.

Caring for each pet costs about $450, which covers vaccines, microchips, spay/neuter surgery and daily care until adoption day. When a dog arrives sick or injured, the bill can climb another $500 to $3,000. Your support is what lets us say yes to the animals who need us most.

Our goal: $5,000 by Giving Tuesday, December 1. Every $450 covers one pet’s care.

Two ways to help:

Give. Every gift goes straight to the animals in our care.
Fundraise. Start your own page and invite friends and family to join you. Along the way you’ll unlock rewards:
- $100: a shoutout on our socials
- $250: a Lifeline T-shirt
- $450: a Lifeline tumbler
- $1,000: a Lifeline hat and your name on the wall at our Webster Adoption Center for a year

The top four fundraisers win a night with the animals. Whoever is in the top four at 7 PM on December 1 is invited, or can send someone in their place. They’ll spend Saturday, December 5 overnight at the adoption center, and we’ll livestream the whole night.

Join us live on Giving Tuesday, December 1, from 6 to 7 PM for our results party, when we’ll reveal the total and the top four.

Organizational Mission

Our mission is to assist every municipal animal shelter in Galveston County with reaching and sustaining no-kill status—defined as maintaining at least a 90% live release rate for all entering pets.

Vision Statement

We envision a future where our municipal animal shelters do not have to euthanize pets due to a lack of kennel space, and our community members have access to the resources they need to keep their pets healthy, happy, and home.

Why We Started

Texas shelters see more animal deaths than any other state in the country, and Galveston County is no exception. In 2019 alone, over 2,300 cats and dogs lost their lives in our local municipal shelters. These were pets who didn’t find an adopter in time, weren’t claimed by their owner, or weren’t given a second chance.

But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be this way.

We started Lifeline to change the outcome for animals most at risk of slipping through the cracks. We aim to assist those overlooked, misunderstood, or simply out of time. We're here to build the programs and community support needed to save them.

Who We Serve

We prioritize the populations we know are most vulnerable in our local shelters:

Community cats (feral, outdoor, or stray cats)
Neonatal kittens
Large Dogs
Nursing dog moms and puppies
"Pitbull” or blocky-headed dogs

These animals are often the first to be euthanized in crowded municipal shelters not because they're unworthy of saving, but because the resources and programs to support them simply don't exist. Yet.

Our History

In 2020, 25-year-old Caroline McKenna approached two friends, Jennifer Jones and Heather Heacock, with a bold idea: to start a nonprofit that could change the fate of at-risk animals in Galveston County. All three women had firsthand experience with the failings of the animal control system. With no funding, but a powerful vision, they launched Lifeline of Galveston County.

They started with the most at-risk population: cats. In 2019, cats made up 65% of shelter deaths in Galveston County many of them healthy outdoor cats who never belonged in a shelter to begin with.

Lifeline’s flagship program became Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), a proven, humane approach to managing outdoor cat populations and preventing future suffering. Through TNR, outdoor cats are humanely trapped, spayed or neutered, vaccinated, ear-tipped for identification, and returned to their original location with a community caretaker. This strategy stabilizes colonies, prevents litters, and reduces nuisance behaviors like spraying and fighting benefiting both the cats and our neighborhoods.

In our first year, we facilitated just over 70 TNR surgeries. By 2023, that number had grown to over 1,500, thanks to our partnership with Fix Ur Pet, the daughter organization of SAVE Rescue. In 2022, we also launched our kitten adoption program, giving adoptable kittens from local colonies a second chance at life in loving homes.

As our program grew, we recognized the need to move faster. In 2023, we made a leap: signing a 3-year lease at a former hair salon in Webster to open our first adoption center. This allowed us to significantly expand our reach. By focusing on pulling at-risk pets from local municipal shelters and continuing to support colony kittens through Fix Ur Pet’s Traps to Laps program, our impact soared.

In 2025, we’re placing 50 to 80 pets per month, both dogs and cats, into adoptive homes. At any given time, we care for 50 to 100 animals in foster homes, many of whom are neonatal kittens, medical cases, or large-breed dogs overlooked in shelters. We also provide essential community support through our pet food bank and free vaccine clinics.

We started small with a dream, a few traps, and a lot of grit. Today, Lifeline is a safety net for the pets of Galveston County, and we’re just getting started.

Where We're Going

We envision a Galveston County where every pet has access to safety, care, and a second chance. While we began with community cats, we’re expanding our programs step by step to meet the needs of other vulnerable animals.

We're not a shelter. We're a safety net. And with your help, we can catch every animal before they fall.

Whether you're volunteering, fostering, donating, or simply sharing our story you are part of a growing movement to create a more humane future in Galveston County.

Together, we can end the killing of companion animals in our community.

Lifesavers

Help us raise 5K this Giving Tuesday for Medical Care