Another day, another trip to the PAWS-Chicago Spay / Neuter clinic, another batch of cats fixed. Today we just had 5 cats. 4 of them were feral (3 from Elmhurst and 1 from Hanover Park) and 1 'friendly feral', this from Lombard. This friendly feral is truly a friendly cat. He was living in an abandoned car (the car had a broken window so he was able to get in and out). He's so friendly (obviously someone dumped him - he is in great shape, he was found wearing a flea-collar, but no micro-chip) that the PAWS clinic is going to accept him into their adoption program.

This is yet another way that PAWS is helping us in the TNR community. In addition to providing, by far, the best, and lowest cost feral package, they occasionally donate food and supplies which we pass on to the colony caretakers. They also allow TNR people to bring in up to 10 ferals per day without an appointment. Now, they will be taking some of the truly adoptable cats we find and putting them into their adoption program. The friendly we brought down today was neutered, vaccinated and tested for FiV/FeLV (both tests came back negative). We now have to foster this cat for two weeks as it has been living on the street and PAWS wants to make sure that symptoms of any other illness do not show up. Once the two week period is over, then PAWS will take it and find him a good home. Thanks PAWS - and thanks, Tammy, for finding the foster home.

We're now up to 84 cats fixed for the month. A couple of weeks ago, Tammy and I were talking about how it might be possible to process 100 cats in a month, but neither of us was very serious about it. Thanks to Tammy's tireless efforts and the PAWS clinic opening up slots for us so that we can bring in 20+ cats at a time, it looks we'll make 100 cats this month, easy.

In January of 2008, Feral Fixers purchased 26 used traps from ChicagoLand Stray Cats. That, plus the 25 or so traps that our President, Tammy McAuley, already owned, gave us a 'stash' of about 50 traps. I thought that would be plenty for us. Silly me. Feral Fixers is now in a position where we are having to juggle requests to borrow our traps. Tonight we ran out - for the first time ever. In one sense, of course, this is good - it means that there are many more people out there trapping cats. In another sense, of course, it is bad - we're now having to balance requests for traps to try and get the most efficient use of them.

I don't want these blog posts to be a continuous series of fund-raising requests, but tonight I'm going to make an exception. If you are considering giving to Feral Fixers, now would be a really good time ☺ Traps cost anywhere from $60 on up, depending on the size and type. If you would consider a donation at this time to Feral Fixers to help us purchase more traps, we (and the trappers) would be MOST grateful. Your donation will be put to immediate and effective use. It's easy to donate to us. Just click on the Donate! button at the top of our website. This will take you to our PayPal donation page where you can donate to us via PayPal or with a Credit Card. We're a registered 501c3 charity, so donations to us are fully deductible. Thank you!

Today we had 8 more cats fixed. Reflecting the diverse location of the cats (and trappers!), these cats came from Elmhurst (multiple locations), Bloomingdale, Hanover Park and Geneva. Jennifer took the cats to PAWS this morning while I picked them up this evening. We'd like to welcome a new transport volunteer, Mary, who rode with Jennifer this morning to learn the ropes. Welcome Mary!

With these 8 cats, Feral Fixers has now fixed 92 cats this month - easily a record for us. We might get to our goal of 100 cats in March this weekend - if not, next week for sure. Overall, Feral Fixers has now fixed 136 cats this year and a total of 749 since we started work in September of 2007. Again, our thanks to all of the volunteers who have helped make this possible and a special thanks to the PAWS-Chicago spay / neuter clinic who, with their incredibly inexpensive Feral Cat package, helps make this all possible. Thanks everyone!

The trap pictured is a Tomahawk 606 - one of our favorites. If you click on the picture, you will see a larger version of it.