Yet another large colony with orange cats! We will not be able to get to everyone before the end of our s/n slots for ferals. We have some surgeries scheduled for friendlies so you will still see additional numbers going up but we have to triage and juggle who gets done before the end of the year – we have another 70? kittens to get neutered in the next few weeks. Cat Guardians was kind enough to take in two huge males from us and they are settling in very well – some of the numbers that are very important but do not get added to the s/n totals – so many friendly adults out there this year!
09/27 – ADOPT – 6 friendlies, 2 females, 4 males. Some of these friendlies will be at the 10/6 adoption event!
10/03 – DCAS – 4 friendlies, 28 ferals, 12 females, 20 males. 10 from the newest large colony. Most of those will be relocated as they are not indicating they want a home. Cats from today came from a total of 17 different locations when you count the two sources of friendlies.
Total: 127 for September, 32 for October, 699 to date in 2024, 15,579 since our beginning.
Sully is from the park in Woodridge. He had a huge inflammatory response to his vaccination, with many symptoms, including so much pain when he lost his baby teeth! Pain medication, fluids, enticing foods, you name it! The food on his nose is a triumph as he almost cleaned up his plate on his own! Doing so much better now!
As you can see, every surface is filled. Kittens that just came in, awaiting movement to CiT, an adult that showed up and the caretaker has been petting him on his lap, one cat waiting for relocation, cats from 15 different locations, including 13 cats from the latest location, etc. The pictures may seem very similar, blog after blog but huge changes happen under those towels and on those tables!
Sunday, 10/6, 1 – 4pm, at Feral Fixers, 330 Eisenhower Ln N, Lombard, IL
Saturday, 10/12, 11am-3pm, at Feral Fixers, 330 Eisenhower Ln N, Lombard, IL
Saturday, 10/26, 11am-3pm, PetSmart Finley Square Shopping Center (1550 Butterfield Rd, Downers Grove, IL)
All Rescues are striving to get their cats adopted so there is a lot of competition. Please share our cats with friends and family and remember, these cats are locally sourced! We have more on hand than we can keep the list updated. Application here. Get pre-approved and then come visit our cats/kittens in person! Help us continue to make a difference in their lives!
September Has Been Something Else!
Details
Written by Tammy McAuley
2024 Season Almost Over
It is already the end of September! We are doing our best to do as many cats as we can, but it looks like our goal of 1,000 is just not going to happen. Shortage of s/n slots, shortage of trapping volunteers, huge increase in litter size and number of litters born and we are just plain beyond exhausted. Our last big trip is 10/10. We may be able to do some friendlies and some mopping up, but we will not be taking on any more new locations, effective immediately, 9/27/24. Harsh! But we cannot be everywhere, helping everyone, all at once! I’ve mentioned before how difficult it is to constantly tell people that we cannot help them due to being outside our area, having to concentrate on DuPage County if we are going to make a long-term difference. This is horribly stressful, the consequences of stopping trapping will be felt in the Sprint but the alternative is to stop forever, and no one wants that, right? Adoptions will continue, we will do what we can with what we have on the books right now, but no new locations – don’t know any other way to do this! We will resume when the overnight temperatures are forecasted to be consistently above freezing.
National Feral Cat Day
Sunday, October 13th from 12 noon to 3pm, 330 Eisenhower Ln N, Lombard, IL. Join us for our bake sale and Boutique sale (t-shirts+). Donations from our Wish List will be gratefully accepted! Socialize with other cat people! Hope to see you there! If you would like to contribute to our Bake Sale, please contact Sue Zorn at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 630-661-8509. Cakes were a big hit last year. Sorry for the short notice, this year is flying by!
September Has Been Something Else!
So far, we have trapped a total of 45 cats at the park in Woodridge. In addition to DCAS and ADOPT, Cat Guardians has stepped up and taken in some of the friendliest we received last week.
Yet another new location in West Chicago resulted in 10 cats and 8 kittens so far, one of the kittens received an eye enucleation the day after being trapped, the eye was really bad, she is doing well (previous blog post mentioned a possible eye removal, that one, while blind in one eye, is doing so much better).
9/16 – DCAS – 6 ferals, 3 female, 3 males. Many thanks for this extra s/n day!
9/19/24 – DCAS – 7 friendly, 17 feral, 16 female, 8 male. One older kitten died upon sedation due to suspected malformation in internal organs.
9/26/24 – DCAS – 26 ferals, 17 female, 9 male. Of 10 adults from one location, 8 were female and one had pyometra which she would not have survived if left unspayed.
Total: 121 for September so far, 661 to date in 2024, 15,541 since our beginning.
26 cats for s/n on 9/26 and just some of the kittens that have come in recently!
As Many as Possible As Soon As Possible
Upcoming Adoption Events
Saturday, 9/28, 11am-3pm, PetSmart Finley Square Shopping Center, 1550 Butterfield Rd, Downers Grove IL
Sunday, 10/6, 1 – 4pm, at Feral Fixers, 330 Eisenhower Ln N, Lombard IL
Saturday, 10/12, 11am-3pm, at Feral Fixers, 330 Eisenhower Ln N, Lombard IL
Saturday, 10/26, 11am-3pm, PetSmart Finley Square Shopping Center, 1550 Butterfield Rd, Downers Grove IL
We are now using Adopt a Pet to advertise our cats and inquiries have increased – Yay! So many listed, but we have many more on hand. You can make a huge difference! You can find an Adoption Application here. You do not have to adopt at an adoption event, but it is a great opportunity to see our cats/kittens in person! We have added some Sunday dates in order to increase accessibility for everyone. Dozens more kittens are awaiting s/n surgery and will soon be adoptable, but we are still experiencing a shortage of surgery slot availability. More kittens and friendly adults coming our way than we can possibly care for – please share our wonderful felines with everyone you know so that we can continue to make a difference in their lives!
Ongoing Challenges...
Details
Written by Tammy McAuley
New Cats Everywhere
9/5 -Just learned of FIFTEEN more cats and kittens in a park in Woodridge. We had neutered and pulled 16 cats and kittens from there in February of this year. Another rescue took several more. If only the people involved would contact us directly! We may not get everyone, those we miss may go on to make even more and so on and so on. If you see colonies of cats, call us!
9/13 – So far, 36 total. 6 went to DCAS, 3 went to ADOPT as we cannot absorb this many cats and NO ONE else can help. Of the 36, 4 kittens are coming in today, haven’t seen them yet. Have heard there are at least 7 more older kittens in the area. They are healthy, good coats, no illnesses. They are being dumped. Someone got overwhelmed and dumped these cats. We do not know who but it would have been so much better if we had been contacted instead. There are coyotes in the area, these cats do not have experience in the outdoors. About half will go to relocation as there is no time or resources to foster to bring them the rest of the way to adoptablility – we have some wonderful locations where the cats will be very well taken care of and probably will end up coming inside with someone – that happens a lot with our relocations, when given time they decide humans are great.
9/16 – Five more trapped on Sunday. Still more there. The level of friendliness is going down, not sure if these have spent more time outside or were harder to transport by whoever dumped them. We walk into TNR to a chorus of meows, repeatedly, as they are trying to tell us their story.
Also, we have 9 kittens from a location in West Chicago without a dedicated caretaker – thin, with URI, one with an eye that will have to be removed, but we’re working on all of them. We’ve TNR’d several adults, there may be 5 more to get.
We cannot do everything, everywhere, all the time. There will be locations we cannot get to this year before the temperatures plummet and we stop trapping. This year the plan is to actually take some time off and shut down trapping like we used to do, we cannot continue full speed for the entire year, we are exhausted.
Due to the volume of cats we are dealing with, these 5 were transferred to ADOPT Pet Shelter in Naperville. Every shelter is so full, we are very grateful they accepted them!
Would You Expect Your Cat to Return After 11 Years?
Microchips are a gift that keeps on giving. How tremendous that the records were still available and the owner still accessible after eleven years!
September Half Over
09/5/24 – DCAS – 6 friendlies, 18 ferals, 8 males,16 females, one female died upon sedation, definitely had some internal organ issues, would have most likely not survived if it had made it thru spay.
9/10/24 – DCAS – 5 friendly, 13 feral, 11 males, 7 females, one female and one male both already s/n.
Total: 65 for September so far, 605 to date in 2024, 15,485 since our beginning.
The TNR room is constantly fluctuating. Some of these cats were neutered on 9/10, there are new kittens due to trapping efforts, and the list goes on.
We have done over 74 cats/kittens from this same location. These cuties came in with fleas and icky poops, we will get them healthy, they are absolute gems!
As Many as Possible As Soon As Possible
Upcoming Adoption Events
Sunday, 9/22, from 1pm-4pm, Feral Fixers, 330 Eisenhower Ln N, Lombard
Saturday, 9/28, 11am-3pm, PetSmart Finley Square Shopping Center, 1550 Butterfield Rd, Downers Grove IL
Saturday, 10/12, 11am-3pm, at Feral Fixers, 330 Eisenhower Ln N, Lombard
We have just 50 cats posted on Petfinder with so many wonderful cats/kittens shown, but we have many more on hand. Make a huge difference in the life of the right cat for you! Adoption Application and further information can be found here. You do not have to adopt at an adoption event, but it is a great opportunity to see our cats/kittens in person! We have added some Sunday dates in order to increase accessibility for everyone. Dozens more kittens are awaiting s/n surgery and will soon be adoptable, but we are still experiencing a shortage of surgery slot availability. There seem to be more kittens and friendly adults coming our way than we can possibly care for – please share our wonderful felines with everyone you know so that we can continue to make a difference in their lives!
2023-2024 Letter From the President
Details
Written by Tammy McAuley
2023 – What A Year
Together, volunteers, donors, caretakers, everyone involved with Feral Fixers, we have accomplished 926 spay/neuters of feral and stray cats and kittens. With the help of our dedicated adoption and foster and animal care volunteers, we have found homes for 360 cats and kittens. In just this year, you can see the impact as we reduced the volume of cats outdoors, we reduced the overpopulation crisis from every direction, helping felines and humans alike.
The challenges have been immense.
Kitten numbers have increased dramatically –societal changes may be the biggest impact: lack of vet access, money, movement of our population – combining households, isolation and hoarding, etc. People are actually paying more attention to the cats outside and are discovering the pregnant cat, the litter of kittens much more readily than in the past which results in overall increased volume that we are contacted about. Every shelter is full. Everyone is doing their best to save every cat they can. Adults and kittens are becoming friendly at an increased pace. Years ago, a feral was a feral was a feral. Not anymore. Kittens sometimes are friendly from the time they are trapped, adults will have a complete turnaround to being friendly. National organizations are seeing this and the only advice they can offer is that even if a cat is friendly, put it back outside – there just aren’t enough homes.
Volunteers. The data can be looked at in many different ways, but finding information that DuPage County ranked 2nd in 102 Illinois Counties of charities per square mile illustrates why it is so difficult finding and maintaining volunteers. No one seems to have as much time as we used to. There are so many choices of where to spend that valuable volunteer time. Our lives can change in an instant and our personal responsibilities must take priority. Feral Fixers has wonderful volunteers, and we treasure them every day. We need more, the volunteer staff is not a constant and can change quickly. From trapping to transport, fostering and shifts of cat care at the building, cleaning – oh my, the cleaning! We do need volunteers who can snuggle kittens just as much as we need those who can sweep floors and do laundry. Social people who can interact with adopters on adoption days, help with events, host events! Everyone has their own strengths and abilities, please share them with us!
Need everywhere. We can average five calls a day for help.
*Discovered kittens under the shed, come help. *My mother let a pregnant cat into her house, come trap and take the kittens. *My cat has lost its mind and is attacking me, help. *I have 15 cats in and around my house (usually results in 60+ cats). *I live outside your area, but I can bring the cats to you. *Been feeding a cat for 2 years, not neutered, now he’s injured from fighting, come help. On social media, you may often see “call Feral Fixers, they will help you” and we do help so many!
With all these challenges we must remember the impact we have had, can you imagine how many cats would be roaming the streets, producing more and more, the suffering we have alleviated, feline and human alike! We have much more work to do but what a difference has been accomplished!
You - donors, volunteers, caretakers, are all responsible for the huge difference Feral Fixers has achieved in the last 16+ years!
Letter From The President - With Your Help
Details
Written by Tammy McAuley
731 spay/neuters of cats and kittens. We brought in +/- 320 friendly cats & kittens. Some of these were previously neutered adults who decided to become friendly after being neutered. There have been approximately 300 adoptions, but still have 33 officially posted for adoption and many more in foster homes. We have helped many cats with injuries and conditions from simple upper respiratory to congenital defects the cats were born with. We have provided food for caretakers. Removed feral cats from inside homes when there was no other way to get them out. Seen the change in cats who were completely feral transitioning into loving lap cats. Relocated cats that could no longer stay where they were due to overpopulation or change of circumstances. You have helped us do so much! So much goes on behind the scenes beyond our reports of spay/neuter trips and you are all part of caring for the stray and feral cats of DuPage County!
What Can We Expect In 2023?
We continue to face the unknown. Who could have expected that across the nation, we are short 15,000 veterinarians? Who could have expected that our nation could be short millions of spay/neuter surgeries? So many different factors are affecting daily lives, it will be interesting to see the impact on cats outdoors, how many kittens will be born to these unneutered females still roaming that no one was able to get to. Prices have gone up for cat food, cat litter, gasoline to take them to appointments & adoptions, and on and on. What can we do? We can continue to get as many spay/neuter appointments as we possibly can and to FILL those appointments, making caretakers aware that they must contact us as soon as a cat is consistent in attendance. It is the ONLY way to lower costs in the future. Once those kittens arrive, we will care for them, using resources for current day expenses, not for preventing even greater expenditures in the future – that is unsustainable and returns us to the past when feral cats were euthanized regularly.
Trapping will resume around the end of March, beginning of April. Keep an eye out for ferals in your area, talk to your neighbors, help us help you to care for those cats.
What Can You Do?
The Amazon Smile donation in November, which covered purchases made between July 1, 2022, and September 30, 2022, came to $606.70. That means that our donors spent $121,340 in that time period and .5% was donated by Amazon Smile – Yay! Use AmazonSmile and designate Feral Fixers – could not be an easier way to raise funds!
Visit our wish lists at Amazon & Chewy – we always need food; canned food in particular goes fast when you are supporting so MANY kittens! Gift cards allow us to purchase what our greatest need at the time is – paper towels, bleach, laundry detergent, litter boxes – amazing the variety of things we purchase to keep going!
Spread our information to coworkers, family, social media – we have donors across the country! Cats have a ripple effect, they don’t stay in one place and affect wider resources than those on their street, in their town, in their county – even in their state! New people are volunteering with us due to sharing information, but we need more volunteers, many more. Trappers, transporters, cleaners in the building, animal care in the building, fosters, event volunteers, the list goes on. You tell us what you want to do to help, and we try to make that fit for both of our benefits!
Frosty Claws in 2023
We seem to be returning to some degree of normalcy. As a result, we will be holding our 2023 Frosty Claws on Sunday, January 15th from 12 noon to 4pm at the Villa Park VFW. We may have huge attendance that day because of skipping years, please be patient. This is an event for our caretakers, adopters, donors, to talk about cats and network with some fundraising and food. We are about to start assembling our Silent Auction and door prize items – we may not have as much “stuff” as in previous years – we will post items as they are created, as soon as we have a chance. We look forward to seeing everyone who can attend!
The Kittyman Sea Shanty
Details
Written by Tammy McAuley
Something to brighten your day...
What A Year!
Details
Written by Tammy McAuley
If nothing else has come of this year it has brought us all new appreciation for what we have, what we have lost and what we are able to do to make things better for ourselves and others.
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!
