Seven blood donating cats at the Ohio State Veterinary Hospital will soon have new living quarters.When the Equine Trauma, Intensive Care and Research Center opens early this year, the hospital will have extra space to use for a cat colony, said Jeff D. Steen, a second-year veterinary student.The cat colony will consist of an open room where they can roam freely and be with other cats instead of small individual cages, Steen said.The cats and 11 dogs in the blood donor program are kept in cages as donors for animals needing blood for various medical reasons, he said.The blood is used when a cat or dog comes into the hospital with a lot of blood loss, perhaps resulting from a car accident, said Kelly E. Adams, the third-year veterinary student who manages the program.Blood transfusions in the hospital are usually for critical patients, she said. Some hospital workers were concerned cages didn’t give the animals ample space and needed more attention, Steen said.The dogs, greyhounds rescued from racing tracks in West Virginia where 55,000 are euthanized each year after they are retired, are kept in cages called runs measuring about four feet by 15 feet, Steen said.’Right now a lot of pre-vet students volunteer to take the cats and dogs home for the weekend,’ he said.The blood donor program is implementing a new system in which the dogs will be adopted and will return to the hospital to donate blood, he said.The dogs will take turns so one will be at the hospital at all times for emergency situations, while the cats will have to stay at the hospital most of the time because the process of drawing their blood is more difficult and results in smaller amounts of blood, Steen said.Some cats come to the program after being retired from research projects, while others have behavioral problems and are given by their owners, Steen said.All cat and dog blood is screened for diseases, he said.’We are looking for dogs that are universal donors, which would be the equivalent of Type O blood in humans,’ he said.