Illinois Department Of Natural Resources Changes Policy

Fantastic Garage Sale – June 26^th!

The Garage Sale is almost here! As we have done in the past, drop off dates are June 21^st through June 25^th at 29w560 Butterfield Rd, Warrenville, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to ask questions and arrange anything special. Sale will be Saturday, June 26^th from 8AM to 3PM at that location. Keep your fingers crossed for good weather!

No TNR On 6/17

Taking the week off, so do not trap from 6/11 to 6/21 unless you intend to keep them at your house! Hoping to work a few more weeks off into this year, cross your fingers!

13,000 Cats in 2021 Looks Possible!

On 6/10 we sent 27 cats to DCAS, 7 ferals and 20 friendlies, with 12 males and 15 females. The kittens born this Spring are already old enough for neutering! Our fosters are doing a great job on these kittens! They were also able to do the dental on the cat from the previous week – he is in much less pain. These neuters bring us to 51 for the month of June, 286 for the year and 12,735 since our beginnings in 2007. We neutered a total of 740 cats last year, we are well on our way to matching that! Our thanks to everyone who makes this possible!

20 carriers and 8 traps	2 vehicles

We even use the front seat for transport sometimes!

Fantastic Garage Sale – June 26th!

Quarterly Report from Amazon Smile

We received our quarterly donation from Amazon Smile, covering January 1, 2021 to March 31, 2021 - $503.52! We receive .5% of what our donors spend which means that you all spent $100,704 and designated Feral Fixers on each purchase! Whoo-Hoo!

Mouse Plague in Australia

Perhaps you remember the all-out war that Australia declared on feral cats in 2015 and it is still going on. I will not include links to articles detailing the hunting still being done on that continent. Is it wrong that I feel that they are getting just what they deserve by being overrun by mice? Australia's answer appears to be poison when they have access to an animal designed to eliminate mice.

Cancer In Cats

Genetically modified organism (GMO) ingredients such as corn, soy, alfalfa and cottonseed in pet foods are culprits in causing cancer because they can contain high concentrations of glyphosates. The World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer declared glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, to be a probable human carcinogen, and research indicates that it does cause cancer in animals. In humans, taking the amino acid glycine can block absorption of glyphosate. It would be great if studies were done on cat foods including supplemental glycine, much the same way taurine was added so long ago. 

No TNR On 6/17

Taking the week off, so do not trap from 6/11 to 6/21 unless you intend to keep them at your house! Hoping to work a few more weeks off into this year, cross your fingers!

More Than 12,700 Cats since 2007!

We've been using doing all our surgeries at DCAS the past 4 weeks – just one trip in a week, but still plenty!

5/13 we sent 2 friendlies, 22 ferals with 10 males and 14 females.

5/20 we sent 2 friendlies, 9 ferals with 5 males and 6 females. Just enough rain to slow us down.

5/27 there were 12 friendlies, 11 ferals with 14 males and 9 females. There was an additional female who decided to give birth that morning and was in the middle of her first kitten when we arrived at the building. The kitten seemed stuck in the birth canal, never encountered that before, so off they went to Glen Ellyn. Either due to stress or travel, kitten was out by the time we arrived. Just to see what to expect, the vet took an x-ray, 4 more were expected. Back to the building (around 9AM) where it was nice and quiet. Check in at 1PM and the remaining 4 had been delivered and seemed to be doing well. By that evening we were able to send them to the mom & babies foster that already had a set from the same colony that had been delivered the night before at the building with 4 kittens. Net gain - 9 kittens from one location. Impossible to know how pregnant or if truly pregnant these females may be – we call these "Blessed Events."

6/3 there were 17 friendlies, 7 ferals with 14 males and 10 females. With this trip we started spay/neuter of the kittens we got in April, dozens more to go! We also had a very beat up brown tabby, just seemed worn out but no specific injuries to be seen. We sent him in, FIV+ and needs a canine removed, which may account for his seeming to be down. He's in a crate, waiting for a dental (appointments are very backed up, we may not get him in until late July) and seeming to appreciate the food and attention – so many cats are turning friendly this year!

This brings us to a total of 77 cats in May, 24 cats so far in June, 259 so far in 2021 and 12,708 since our start in 2007. Last year we had done 215 by the END of June, in 2019 we had done 239 by the end of June. We are already well ahead of "normal" still! Many thanks to Karen, April, Cheri, Laura, Edie, Mark, Diane, Kim, Debbie, Charli, Dedra for trapping and transporting all of these cats! Many thanks to the caretakers who are contacting us and trapping! A lot of people to make a big difference!

Cats from 5/13 trip	Most of the 17 kittens on 6/3, on their way!

Consequences Of Trapping

What happens when you trap feral cats? You get KITTENS and FRIENDLIES! Feral Fixers makes every effort to pull those adoptable cats and not send them back outside. Friendlies do stupid things, get injured, get trapped in garages/sheds with no food or water, they just don't have the same survival instincts. The consequences of pulling cats from the outside are that we need FOSTERS! Imagine trapping in an area that you've already done over 50 cats and a kitten comes out and starts yelling at you and clearly wants to be trapped. This same kitten immediately starts purring when touched while in the trap. That same kitten looks at you with so much gratitude after he's neutered. Now, imagine you have no foster for he and his brother/cousin from the same location? He is so ready to move forward and learn what being in a home is like but is being delayed because there is no foster home to send the two of them to. There is a lot of stress in Rescue and TNR and this is a big one. You may not be able to foster 365 days/year, you may only be able to do one litter a year, you may only be able to foster an adult that just needs a quiet place to adjust until he finds his forever home. There are different levels of care, all cats are individuals. If you are interested in Fostering, please fill out our online Foster Questionnaire. We take pride in our foster program and you will learn so much from our fabulous cats & kittens!

In the last two weeks:

• On 4/29 we sent 19 ferals to DCAS, 12 females and 7 males.
• On 4/30 we sent 5 ferals to ADOPT, all 5 were female.
• On 5/6 we sent 15 ferals to DCAS, 10 females and 6 males. We always wish a safe, happy home for the cats - one of the females of this trip was showing signs of being friendly and the caretaker had said that he would take her in if that was the case – Saturday, our volunteer brought a crate with when she returned Margie and set her up in a room. Five minutes away, she got a call from the caretaker, cat was out of crate (not our instructions 😊) and loving on him already, she has a permanent home now.
• On 5/7 we sent 3 friendlies, 1 feral to ADOPT, 2 females, 2 males. Unfortunately, the feral male had a severe head abscess and many other injuries while being hard FIV+ which would impact any hope of healing and he was euthanized. We relay this information so that it is clear that neutering saves lives – if this cat was neutered, he wouldn't have had the fighting behaviors that resulted in his injuries and FIV status.

Too often, there are kittens in a colony that we are unaware of prior to trapping. From late PM on 5/5 to late PM on 5/6 three kittens were discovered in and out of a completely crammed garage and shed. In the 5/6 trip there were 3 females from one location, they came back from surgery with notes that one was 6 years old, one was in heat and one was lactating. On 5/7 we tried putting the kittens with the lactating female – she was not thrilled but was letting them climb all over her. We decided to risk it, sent them off to a mom & babies foster and by early 5/8 heard the great news that all were nursing and the babies were tasting the canned food already!

You can see how hard we're working, this brings us to a total of 116 cats in April, 19 cats so far in May, 177 so far in 2021 and 12,626 since our start in 2007. Last year it was so hard to get surgery slots, by the end of May we had done only 95 cats in 2020. In 2019, by the end of May we had done 157 – so we're still ahead of when things were "normal"! Many thanks to Karen, April, Cheri, Laura, Edie, Mark, Diane, Kim for facilitating trapping, in addition to all the caretakers who are trapping! Thank you to our transporters – Debbie, Charli, Dedra, Karen, April! It takes a lot of people to accomplish this work!

19 cats already done!	The TNR room is so calm...

Bryan & Margie

Thank you for doing YOUR part!

Fund Our Ferals' Futures Fundraisers A Success!

Our fundraisers were successful! Our DuPage Giving Days raised a total of over $8,000 (final figures for an additional pool of funds not available yet) and our Giving Grid met the goal of $10,000 (with a matching of $10,000). This will help us continue to work on our building and definitely fund the purchase of our ISO cages (below). And, of course, keep the lights on, water flowing and the garbage collected – all those things associated with property upkeep!

Our ISO Room Has Cages!

(From Sue Lee)

We now have cages in our ISO room! The Shor-Line cages arrived on Thursday, 5/6. Debbie was there to receive them, and Larry and Karen promptly moved them into the building and got them unboxed.

Today, Saturday, 5/8, a team of folks including Larry, Laura and Vicki figured out all of the puzzle pieces and got them assembled. A special challenge was getting them properly aligned so the doors open and close smoothly. Thanks to Larry's, Vicki's and Laura's ingenuity and determination, the cages are looking and functioning nicely.

A few tasks remain - swapping the direction the door swings on 6 of the cages to accommodate the room configuration and installing the cat portals connecting two pairs of cages. Challenges for another day!

Many thanks to Larry, Laura, Vicki, Karen and Debbie for their help with this project!

We appreciate all the people who have continued to care about the cats. Many new caretakers had the time to resolve the cats around them. Extra time spent at home led to lots of new fosters and some foster failures as those families adopted their fosters, unable to part with them. People spending more time at home led to many more kittens being brought in and the longest "kitten season" we've ever experienced with the extended balmy weather. We formed tighter bonds with the area rescues as we all went thru the same challenges.

All those kittens took a toll on our fosters, our s/n transporters and Sue, our adoption counselor. There were individual kittens that actually received 40 – 50 inquiries EACH! But each of these kittens go to the best home possible for them as individuals and the alumni stories we receive validate the effort put into that goal. Please take the time to read the foster story included in this newsletter, we have some very impressive volunteers.

Thru it all we kept going as our physical interactions with people are limited and usually outdoors. A few fosters experienced COVID, most of us have been able to remain healthy.

Our ability to fundraise has been greatly impacted as cat people are much more social with other cat people than one might think and they greatly enjoy our in-person events!

A Few Notes About the Building

We try to wash and disinfect our traps before they go into Winter storage so they can be used immediately in the Spring. We were able to transport them all to the building, the railing spacing on the ramp made it very easy to get them into the building, the new washtub was able to hold 4 traps (3 large, 1 small) at once, so simple! And there was plenty of room for spraying with a blast of disinfectant, rinsing and shipping off to storage!

Fundraising

Just a few more days of our Black Cat Giving Tuesday Fundraiser. We hope the 2021 Feral Fixers Happy New Year! Raffle helps to replace our Frosty Claws event and provide something our donors will enjoy participating in.

For many reasons, I receive emails from a great many non-profits. That means that I see how they promote their organizations and ask for money. We do our very best to be different, low-volume and specific about our needs. I can't imagine how weary some of you must be, bombarded on a daily basis by every group for human, environmental, political and animal needs. I could say negative things about those other groups but would instead reaffirm that funds donated to Feral Fixers work to benefit the cats in this geographic area. Surgeries, medications, food, transportation, supplies, a building to house them in, it all goes towards the cats. The percentage of funds used for fundraising (administrative costs are often a high percentage of total costs) is minimal. We adapt ideas and make our asks as enjoyable as possible 😸. We will never be able to give up fundraising but promise to keep the annoyance to a minimum!

We have personal relationships with our donors and we appreciate them so much!

Happy Holidays!

We wish you a Wonderful Holiday and the Best Possible New Year!

Thank you all for your personal messages this year, they are greatly appreciated. Wish we could thank you all individually!

DuPage Giving Days

S/N Still Shut Down

While we cannot hold spay days yet, cats continue to come our way.  On March 25^th, one of our volunteers picked up a cat that was supposed to be friendly – the people had even put a collar on him and a leash before they picked him up and put him in a carrier for our volunteer.  Gets to my garage – totally different behavior, hissing on the sight of me.  That happens sometimes.  He had an ear tip but a really bad eye – looked mushy.  Left on its own it might have just dried up but he looked to be in pain.  Cases like this are very difficult, ferals cannot be treated the way friendlies can – no topical meds, limited oral meds, it can be a battle.  Don't take this the wrong way but unfortunately he had nothing else wrong with him!  It was a real 50-50 situation.  I opted for eye removal, with the hope we would have a supportive relocation site available for when he healed.  Petey refused to eat on his own, we finally negotiated that I would hold his cone with my left hand while syringing a gruel of baby food and fine pate into him, while he growled and chomped on the syringe.  After a few days he would eat small amounts from the saucer overnight.  Day 8, there was an abscess behind the incision and back he went for a re-do.  Cultured the material and Bayril was the right antibiotic.  Liquid med is causing an amazing amount of drool so going back to the vet for tablets that can be crushed and mixed with a small amount of food and syringed.  Wish me luck!  He is not grateful in the slightest!  We cannot give all the cats we encounter this level of care but I am trying with Petey – one of the cats we treat "As If They Were Our Own."

Building

Despite the shut-down, we are able to do some work on the building.  IT wiring will happen very soon and we are fine-tuning the layout and changes.  We will be moving some doors and putting in new ones, taking out a wall, removing the vault – we have no idea why the building had a vault with an enormous, heavy door – like a bank!  We will be changing the types of doors on the rooms so that we will be able to see what the cats are doing before we step in, lots of changes!   Once we get a permit, double doors will be installed on the back of the building, providing easier access for cats in traps, etc.  This will entail a ramp going up to the doors from the parking lot.

We need someone experienced in rehabbing/carpentry, who can help us with these tasks.  We rely heavily on personal recommendations from our donors and volunteers, so please forward your suggestions or ask that they contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  While permitting may take some time, the sooner we have someone to work with, the sooner we can make plans for this part of the process.

Microchip Wand

There's always something new!  We thought it was great when they came up with the pole microchip scanner but the round scanning end does have its issues.  Now, with this model, a cat could be scanned in almost any situation and claims to be reliable two inches away from the chip.  We get feral cats in carriers, traps, crates, and using the round scanner can have its risks.  Looks like this could be threaded into any container.  If you are looking to donate equipment, while not an emergency need, it would make our lives just that bit easier!

Food Donation Program Volunteers Needed

We receive food donations from Rescue Pack, paying only the shipping costs.  The canned and dry food is delivered to a trucking company in Carol Stream.  We also can receive litter and other supplies.  We support feral cat colonies and low-income families with limited resources.  These donations are palletized and can weigh 1,000 to 2,000lbs for each skid.  We are limited to two vehicles doing pick up on a distribution day.  We store the supplies and pass them out to the people we support.

The volunteers who have taken care of this for the last 3 years are moving out of the area and can no longer do any part of these responsibilities.  What we need:

1. Availability on a Saturday AM – sometimes due to inclement weather, distribution can get bumped to the next day. Distributions can be every one to two months depending on product availability.
2. Access to a vehicle (truck, large SUV, etc.) that can be loaded by forklift. Special arrangement needs to be made for hand loading and it really slows down their process.  They service about 90 organizations on that one day distribution.  There are truck rental companies that give us a discount on rental but we need someone comfortable driving a large delivery truck.
3. Physically able to assist with unloading.
4. Storage availability for 1 to 4 skids of canned and dry food – garage or warehouse space. Litter and other supplies could be stored elsewhere.  Arrangements can be made for recipients to come pick up same day as much as they can transport but that is not always possible.  Availability for pickup from your location at pre-arranged times by our recipients.  Our new building will not be able to hold this volume of donations and we need to have an alternative.  Unexpected donations from other sources can happen, too.
5. One person does not have to be responsible for all aspects of the program. There is usually a two-week warning of an upcoming distribution.

Due to the pandemic, we don't know when the next distribution will take place as resources are being concentrated in hot spots.

Please contact Tammy This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 630-881-3977 if you may have the resources to take on this program in whole or a portion of it.

Finally, a reminder... April 15 is the deadline for sending in photo entries for the 2020-2021 Holiday Card Contest. As many of you know, each year Feral Fixers sends out a Holiday Greeting card to everyone on our current mailing list. Beginning with the 2012 card, the picture on the card was chosen from entries made by you, our friends and supporters. While there is no monetary prize awarded for the winning entry, the winning photographer will be credited on the Holiday card. The picture should definitely say "winter" and "outdoor cat". A shelter would be nice, but is certainly not required. We can accept pictures in nearly any format as long as the resolution is acceptable. Please send your submissions to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Good luck!

Thank you to everyone who continue support us!

Stay Safe!  Stay Healthy!

Winter Feral Cat Care

Still Not Trapping, But…

While we cannot plunge into full-fledged TNR, there have been situations that we were able and had to respond to. On 2/3, Blizzard (male, feral) went to Glen Ellyn Animal Hospital with an abscessed wound on his tail. Since he had to be sedated to care for the injury, he was neutered at the same time. He has NOT decided to be friendly but is now healed and as soon as the weather improves, will go back outside. We received a call from a guy who had gone to great lengths to care for a group of ferals – renting a garage just to house them. The landlord discovered this and said they had to go. We were contacted 4 days before the deadline. Luckily one of our volunteers had the use of space to house them temporarily. Most were able to be loaded into carriers by the caretaker, one had to be trapped. These 8 cats would sing (okay, yowl) most of the night for the first 3 nights – this happens as cats try to make themselves feel better about such a huge change. They suddenly became more settled on the 4th day, only one continuing to yell – but that seemed to be because she wanted to be petted! A man was threatening to shoot the ferals in his yard. He wasn't going to change, cats needed to be trapped and removed. They seem to come from down the street, we'll be pursuing that location as soon as we can for TNR. First cat turned out to be quite friendly, 2nd is not super feral, we'll see. On 2/16, we sent 10 cats to ADOPT, since we needed to be sure we wouldn't have to go back and eartip later if they did not become adoptable, they were all done as ferals. With these, we've done 11 cats so far in February, 15 for 2021, our grand total is 12,464! Again, we are dragging our feet on further surgeries until the weather improves around the end of March.

Honey

Another Microchips Are Forever Story – In May 2011, we removed a total of 19 cats from a trailer in Plainfield, back when we were more likely to do hoarding situations. Those cats had a range of outcomes. Some were too feral and were relocated to a pig sanctuary that needed cats to cope with mice in the grain storage area. Some went for adoption to PAWS and to PURRS, some were adoptions from Feral Fixers later in 2011. Microchips are forever and we have new information about Honey. She was adopted thru Feral Fixers. Those adopters had a life change, surrendered her to DuPage County Animal Services in May 2020. We had no place to put her (2020!) and she was transferred to Chicagoland Animal Rescue from DCAS (CAR takes in a lot of older or less easily adoptable cats from DCAS – thank you!). After a brief stay with CAR, Honey AKA Oksana was adopted by a wonderful man on 7/15/20. What a long road and we're very glad to have played a part in it!

Honey aka Oksana in her new home

Petting A Cat Releases Endorphins

We knew there was more to petting a cat than just making the CAT happy, right? Turns out it increases our endorphins, making US happy, too! Does having one cat make us want more because of our physical response?

More SNOW!

I will admit to wanting more snow than in previous years so that we could have some great candidates for our Holiday card this year. I did not ask for this much, I'm sure of it! Please don't waste this opportunity to catch pictures of your ferals and have the opportunity to share your special feral with thousands of others! Please send your high definition, clear photo to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by April 15th – the deadline will be here before you know it! Make sure we can see the eartip and there is some snow in the pic, our only criteria!