Short version: check for a collar and tag, get the animal scanned for a microchip, file a found report where an owner searching will see it — and then call the right number, which depends entirely on which city you happen to be standing in. Minneapolis and Saint Paul run their own animal control. Most suburbs contract theirs out, and not all to the same place.
That last part is the bit nobody tells you, so it’s most of what’s below.
First, before anything else
Look for a collar and tag. If there’s a phone number on it, call it. That’s the whole job, and it works more often than people expect. Minnesota law actually requires a dog that’s off its owner’s property and out of their control to carry identification — a tag with a name and number, a microchip, a tattoo, a city license tag, or a current rabies tag (Minn. Stat. § 346.50). So there’s a decent chance something on that animal points home.
Then get it scanned. Veterinary clinics, shelters and many retail pet stores will run a scanner over an animal for free, and it takes about a minute. The Animal Humane Society suggests exactly that if there’s no tag. A chip number isn’t a phone number — it points at a registry, and the registry holds the contact details. Anyone scanning will know how to trace it, and the free AAHA pet microchip lookup tool will tell you which registry a number belongs to.
Worth knowing: Minnesota law puts that duty on shelters too. Staff who receive an animal have to check it for identification, work out who the owner is where they can, and notify that person promptly (Minn. Stat. § 346.54).
Then file a found report. This is the step people skip, and it’s the one that makes the animal findable from the other direction. Minneapolis Animal Care & Control partners with Petco Love Lost, a free national database that matches lost and found photos, and it’s the same place the Animal Humane Society sends people. Lost Dogs MN and Lost Cats MN on Facebook are where a lot of local searching actually happens. And call your local animal control to ask whether a lost report already matches the animal you’re looking at — sometimes it’s a two-minute phone call and a very good day.
Who to call depends on which city you’re in
Here’s the thing that makes this hard to search for. There isn’t one number for the metro. There are dozens, and which one is yours is decided by a municipal contract you’ve never read.
Minneapolis runs Minneapolis Animal Care & Control. For a friendly dog you can’t hold onto, an animal you don’t feel safe approaching, or one that’s sick or injured, the city says to contact 311 — that’s 311 in the city, or 612-673-3000.
Saint Paul runs its own shelter through Saint Paul Animal Services. The number is 651-266-1100 on weekdays. After hours, the city directs people to the Saint Paul Police non-emergency line at 651-291-1111, and it says to call 911 if an animal is sick, injured or in danger.
The suburbs are where it splits. Some cities contract field work and impounding to a private operator; some use the Animal Humane Society; some do both, for different things.
- Coon Rapids says stray animals picked up by its community service officers go to Companion Animal Control in Oakdale, and are held there for five days.
- Blaine also partners with Companion Animal Care & Control, and points people to the Blaine Police Department first. The page is titled “Lost or Stray Dogs,” and cats don’t appear on it.
- Oakdale tells residents to call 9-1-1 for animal control issues, and names both Companion Animal Care & Control and the Animal Humane Society as places a recovered animal may be posted.
Three neighboring-ish cities, three different first phone calls. Multiply that by the eighty-odd municipalities in this metro and you can see why a single “call this number” answer doesn’t exist.
One thing to know about every number on this page, ours included: check your city’s own page before you dial. Cities change contractors, shelters move, and phone numbers get renumbered, and none of that reaches an article written in August. We checked all of these against the cities’ own pages, and the city’s page is still the one that’s right today. Treat what’s here as a map of how the system works, not as a phone book.
How to find your own city’s answer in two minutes
- Search your city’s name plus “animal control.” Nearly every city site has a page, and it names the facility it uses.
- Check the Animal Control and Impound Facilities list the Animal Humane Society publishes. It’s a plain public spreadsheet of Minnesota cities, the impound facility each one uses, which species that facility takes, and phone numbers. It’s the closest thing to a metro-wide directory that exists.
- Call your police department’s non-emergency line. Dispatch knows who picks up animals in your city, because they’re the ones who send them.
Any of the three beats a number you found somewhere else, this page included — they’re the sources that get updated when something changes.
A loose dog and a loose cat are two different calls
This is the part that sends people to the wrong place, and it’s worth getting right before you spend an afternoon on the phone.
A dog running loose is animal control’s job in essentially every city here. That’s what the pages above are describing.
A healthy cat outdoors usually isn’t. Minneapolis states plainly that it does not impound healthy stray cats, giving two reasons: outdoor cats aren’t prohibited in the city, and a cat left where it’s found is more likely to make its own way home. Saint Paul says it can take in found dogs, and sick or injured cats, and kittens without a mother — but that at this time it isn’t able to accept healthy stray cats at the city shelter.
Both of those are the cities’ own words, and “at this time” is doing real work in Saint Paul’s. Cat policy is the part most likely to have moved since we wrote this, so read it on the city’s page before you plan your afternoon around it.
So if you’re holding a friendly, healthy cat that clearly belongs to somebody, the city department probably isn’t your answer. Rescues and humane societies are, and that’s a phone-around rather than a single call. Our directory lists the organizations working with cats across Minnesota — including Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Coon Rapids and Blaine — and you can browse the whole list by city or by what an organization takes in.
Stray cat, or community cat?
Before you catch a cat, spend two minutes deciding which kind it is. The right action is completely different, and the cat will tell you.
Look at the ears. A cat missing the tip of one ear has been through a trap-neuter-return program. That’s a universal marker, and it means the cat is already spayed or neutered and vaccinated and lives outdoors as its home. Leave that one exactly where it is. Alley Cat Allies has the clearest explanation of the marker and what it signals.
Watch how it behaves. A cat that walks up to you, rubs your leg, or lets you touch it is socialized to people — which usually means it lived with some. If that cat also looks thin or unkempt, treat it as a lost pet: scan, report, ask around the block.
Kittens are their own thing. A litter alone outdoors almost never needs rescuing on the spot. Their mother is very likely nearby, hunting or moving them one at a time, and she’s better at this than any of us. Alley Cat Allies’ advice is to watch from a distance for hours before intervening, and to step in if the mother genuinely doesn’t come back or if anyone in the litter looks sick or hurt.
What the five-day hold actually means
If an animal does get impounded, Minnesota sets a floor on how long it’s held.
Minn. Stat. § 346.47 says animals seized by public authority must be held for redemption by the owner for at least five regular business days, or longer where a city ordinance says so. And “regular business day” has a definition: a day the facility is open to the public for at least four consecutive hours between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. Stack a weekend and a holiday in the middle and five business days is comfortably more than a week on the calendar.
The same statute does something else that’s genuinely useful and almost nobody knows about. Facilities holding seized animals have to keep records — species, breed, sex, approximate age, distinguishing traits, where the animal was picked up, what date — and keep them for six months, in a form the public can read. Anyone can look at those records, and at the animals, during the hours the facility is open. If you’re trying to work out whether the dog you saw on Tuesday made it somewhere safe, that’s the door.
Winter changes the clock
An animal that would be fine outside overnight in July is a different problem in January, and it’s the reason this page is written for Minnesota rather than copied from somewhere warmer.
Fur is not the insulation people assume it is. What veterinarians watch for is frostbite on ears, tails and feet — extremities, where blood flow drops first — and the standing veterinary advice is that no pet should be outside for long stretches in below-freezing weather. For scale, the National Weather Service puts exposed skin freezing in about 30 minutes at 0°F with a 15 mph wind, which is an ordinary January night here rather than a remarkable one. We’ve written more about what cold actually does to a dog if you want the detail.
Two practical things follow.
“Leave a healthy cat where you found it” turns on the word healthy. That’s sound advice, and it’s what Minneapolis publishes. In deep cold, look harder before you decide which category you’re in — a limp, a wound, frozen ears, or a cat that won’t get up is a sick-or-injured animal, and both Minneapolis and Saint Paul handle those differently from a healthy one.
Bang on your hood before you start the car. Cats climb into warm engine bays in winter. Knocking on the hood or sounding the horn gives them a few seconds to get out, and it costs you nothing.
If nobody comes forward
Here’s the honest part. Finding an animal a place to land is not guaranteed, and it’s rarely instant.
The Animal Humane Society asks people to call its Pet Helpline (952-435-7738) to schedule an admissions appointment, and says directly that capacity may mean it can’t take an animal in right away — though staff can still scan for a microchip and refer you to your local animal control. Smaller foster-based rescues run on how many foster homes happen to be free that week, which is a number that changes constantly and that no directory can publish.
So: call more than one. Ask what they take and when. Be ready for “not this week.” If you’re the one holding the animal in the meantime, keep the found report live so an owner searching can still reach you.
And if it turns out nobody’s looking, and you find yourself thinking about keeping this animal — that’s a real path, and it’s worth reading what adopting through a rescue involves and what “no kill” does and doesn’t mean before you start. Neither is a formality.
One warning, because it’s local and current
Minneapolis Animal Care & Control has published a warning about scams aimed at people who’ve lost pets: callers posing as shelter staff, sometimes spoofing the city’s own phone number, claiming an animal needs emergency surgery and asking to be paid. The city’s position is that it will never ask for money over the phone or by text to return a pet, and that reclaiming an animal means coming in and showing proof of ownership.
If you’re helping an owner you’ve found, it’s worth passing that along. Somebody who’s just spent three days looking for their dog will believe almost anything somebody tells them on the phone.
Start here
Get the animal scanned. File the found report. Then find your city’s number — your city website, the impound facility list, or the police non-emergency line.
If the animal you’re holding is a cat, or nobody’s picking up, the directory of Minnesota rescues and shelters is the place to start working the phone.
