For those in the market for a pet, now is the time to adopt, according to officials who handle, and volunteers who care for, the homeless animals of Beaufort County.

The local shelter is operating at capacity because intakes have increased dramatically, according to Beaufort County Animal Control Chief Todd Taylor.

“The numbers are up big time,” Taylor said. “Spring and summer time is when breeding season starts.”

The number of animals being dropped off at the Betsy Bailey Nelson Animal Control Facility are startling. In the first four months of year, 254 cats entered in the shelter; just in the past 44 days, another 225 have been dropped off.

Dogs are less of an issue, but only marginally so. In the first four months of 2014, 361 dogs arrived at the shelter, while in the past 44 days, 129 more have come in.

“It kind of blew my mind,” Taylor said. “Dogs are not as bad. Cats, for some reason — it never fails.”

Taylor said the problem lies with unsprayed and unneutered animals, many of them strays, or strays who have been loosely taken in by people who feed them but don’t claim responsibility for the animals. It’s the offspring that end up in the shelter while the parents are left to repeat the cycle of reproduction. The only way to combat the population spike is to spay or neuter the adults, he said.

“It’s so upsetting when someone brings in a box of kittens and they don’t bring in the mother,” said Leslie Steele, one of the founders of Washington Cat Rescue.

If not adopted or rescued, many of the animals will be euthanized.

Steele, along with WCR co-founder Nancy O’Neill, are pulling as many cats from the shelter as they can to prevent that, but even the rescues they regularly work with are overwhelmed this season. This week, O’Neill delivered a Beaufort County cat to Asheville and three kittens to Charlotte through their network of rescue agencies, but the sheer number of cats in the shelter has led them to make two pleas to the public. One, they are searching for anyone to foster shelter cats; the other, they are asking that anyone who needs assistance with spaying or neutering a cat to reach out for help.

For the past several years, organizations like WCR and the Humane Society of Beaufort County have implemented programs to help pet owners get animals spayed and neutered to keep stray populations down. HSBC offsets costs associated with the medical procedures to keep adoption fees low and works with animal control to cut those fees even more in times of overpopulation. This month, the cost to adopt any shelter cat has been dropped to $25 in an effort to spur adoptions.

WCR often takes the effort farther by trapping stray-but-fed animals to spay or neuter, and provide required vaccinations, before releasing them back to their caretakers, Steele said.

“I thought this year would be better because we’ve been working for a couple years, but it’s not,” Steele said.

The good news from the shelter is that adoption rates are even better than last year, which was a record year, Taylor said.

So far this year, 547 cats and dogs have been adopted or rescued from the local shelter. During the first half of 2013, that number was 387.

“We’re on the same track to hopefully, maybe, overcome that record,” Taylor said.

Still, the shelter is full. On Friday, the shelter was housing 103 animals.

“We’re wide open right now,” Taylor said.

Both Taylor and Steele strongly recommend that anyone feeding a stray animal, but doesn’t want the responsibility of pet ownership, should reach out to authorities. By law, residents must: a Beaufort County ordinance requires residents to notify animal control within 72 hours of a stray wandering onto property and sticking around.

“If they don’t want to keep the pet, they need to contact us. We need to get them into to the facility,” Taylor said.

“Be responsible enough to make a phone call,” Steele said.

To see animals currently in the local shelter, visit the ENC Shelter Dogs and ENC Shelter Cats pages on Facebook. For those interested in fostering cats, call Washington Cat Rescue at 252-833-4347.