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Practicing and promoting
Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) in DuPage County, Illinois |
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We're a 501c3 not-for-profit organization
dedicated to promoting and practicing Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) in DuPage
County, Illinois. We believe that TNR is the only effective, humane and
long-term solution to the problem of cat overpopulation. |
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The Feral Fixers e-Newsletter - Issue #6 -
March, 2009 |
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Wet your
Whiskers! Feral Fixers is
proud to announce its next event; the first annual "Wet your
Whiskers"! This event, to be held in late June, will be a
fund-raiser for Feral Fixers and a chance for all of us who support
Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) to get together for an evening of fun and
frolic.
Arrangements are now being made for
the venue and the entertainment for the evening. Further
details will be in next month's newsletter and will be posted on our
website.
Stay tuned! |
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Message from
the President Many feral
cat caretakers live in fear of Animal Control, but have you ever
thought about where the responsibility for pet overpopulation and
euthanasia really lies? Our society has created different
governmental departments to carry out the laws that we enact to cope
with these issues, so really, we, the public, are responsible. It is
possible to become a town or a county that comes close to being
no-kill, to do that we must make the necessary changes to facilitate
this.
Here are the links to the statistics from 2007 and 2008 for DuPage
County Animal Care and Control (note these are pdf files - you need
the Adobe Acrobat Reader (available here) to read them). We are
publishing these statistics with their full permission. As you can
see, we (they, all of us) have a ways to go before we can think
about "No-Kill" DuPage County.
The information can be a little
confusing when seen all lumped together. Please take the time to
look at the charts, line by line. For our purposes we are only
concerned with the Cat column – the Dogs hopefully have their own
spokespeople!
There was a rise in cat euthanasia from 2007 to 2008, which seems
directly attributable to the increase in the number of ferals
brought in (= 138), but there were also fewer cats going out due to
return to owner, adoptions and transfers to other shelters (= 235).
The difference in total euthanasia was a 143 cat increase...
Visit our
website to read more about what our President, Tammy McAuley,
has to say about our local Animal Care & Control organization and
what we can to do end the problem of pet over-population. |
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Want to help?
Interested in helping Feral Fixers? We are looking for a 'few good
volunteers'! Specifically, we're looking for someone to help us
transport cats to and from PAWS (the Spay/Neuter clinic we use) in
Chicago. We need transport both in the morning and the afternoon.
If you're interested in helping, call us at (630) 881-FXRS (3977) or
email us at info@feralfixers.org. |
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Matching
contributions A truly
wonderful way to help raise money for Feral Fixers is to try and get
your employer to designate Feral Fixers as an organization which is
eligible for 'Matching Contributions'. What this allows the
employee to do is to contribute to Feral Fixers and then have that
contribution matched by the employer; essentially a '2-for-1'
donation.
One such organization which has
designated Feral Fixers as an organization eligible for matching
contributions is
HSBC
Bank. Pat is an employee there and has taken
the time to file the paperwork and, generally, chase after the
process to get this accomplished. Now, whenever Pat gives
us a donation, HSBC will match this. If you are an employee of
HSBC, please take advantage of this capability and let HSBC know
when you donate to Feral Fixers. Doing so will double your donation to Feral
Fixers without costing you any additional money. Thanks Pat!
If you work for an employer which has a
matching gift program, we encourage you to ask them to designate
Feral Fixers as an organization eligible for these matching
donations. We are a registered 501c3 organization and can
supply you with any and all documentation necessary to prove that we
are an organization which is legally allowed to receive these types
of donations. Thank you! |
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How many cats?
726 !!
Feral Fixers was founded and incorporated in late September, 2007.
In our first fiscal year (through September, 2008) Feral Fixers had
476 cats spay/neutered. So far in our second fiscal year,
Feral Fixers has had 250 more cats spay/neutered. |
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Website
updates We are thrilled to
announce that 'The Artist Formerly Known as Katt' has agreed to join
our website staff! "Kattt" (as he is now known) is now
submitting a weekly column to our website; "Audios / Visuals
of the Week", a column where Kattt shares with us humans his
unbiased and hard-hitting look at the Feline world. Please
note that we do not edit Kattt's postings in any way; he would agree
to join us only if we did not censor any of his work.
Therefore, we have to warn you to not let dogs or small children to
view our website unsupervised.
For this newsletter, and as a public service, 'The Artist
Formerly Known as Katt' (as he now wishes to be known) has
pointed us to a a website which will let we humans know if our cat
is exhibiting behavior we should be concerned about. I will
now let 'The Artist...' speak...
"Greetings humans! While most of
us in the feline world are quite happy to co-exist with you humans,
there are a few of us who are just 'bad apples' and would like
nothing better than to be responsible for a feline-induced homicide.
These cats pretend to be nice to their human servants, all the while
plotting their demise. One of our 'better angels' has taken it
upon himself to create a website whereby you can not only view some
of the warning signs that 'your' cat wants to do you in, it also
lets you take a quiz so that you can quantify the threat. Here
is a clue that 'your' cat might have nefarious designs...
Visit
this website
and save yourselves!" |
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Jewel-Osco Shop & Share
update
Feral Fixers
collected over $232 from the 3
Jewel-Osco Shop & Share dates that Diane arranged for us.
This is enough to fix about 10 cats. Thanks Diane (and
thank you, Jewel-Osco, for having such a wonderful program)!
She will be arranging some more of these Shop & Share dates for
us this year and they will be announced in this newsletter. |
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Donate to
Feral Fixers Feral Fixers
offers its TNR services to all colony caretakers, without charge.
While we ask for donations from colony caretakers, we recognize that
for some of them, any additional cost is just too much.
Therefore we rely on donations from other individuals to make up the
difference and allow us to continue our work. These donations
allow us to spay/neuter additional cats, keep a 'bank' of traps and
trap dividers we loan out for free, hold workshops and provide other
educational benefits. You can help us continue our work by
clicking on the Donate button, below. This will take you to
the PayPal website where you can donate to Feral Fixers via PayPal
or Credit card. Feral Fixers is a registered 501c3 charitable
organization and any donation is deductible to the fullest amount
allowed by law. Any amount you care to donate is gratefully received.
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Shop for Feral Fixers! |
Want to purchase something purr-fect for your cat-lover
friends and help out Feral Fixers at the same time? Just visit our
Café Press store and
Buy Something! In addition to the Spaghetti Tank Top shown to the right, we
have T-shirts, Hoodies, Coffee Mugs, Pet food bowls, etc. A portion
of each sale goes to help us in our TNR efforts. To visit the store,
just click on the Spaghetti Tank Top or visit our website
and click on the 'Buy Something' button at the top - Thank you! |
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Visit us on the
Web! Visit our
website at www.feralfixers.org.
There you can donate to us (via PayPal or Credit card), visit our store,
read the latest news, and learn more
about Feral cats. If this newsletter has been forwarded to you,
you can also sign up to be on our mailing list so you don't miss a
thing! |
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What is TNR (Trap / Neuter / Return)? TNR is a full management plan in
which stray and feral cats already living outdoors in cities, towns, and
rural areas are humanely trapped, evaluated, vaccinated, and sterilized
by veterinarians. Adoptable cats and kittens are transferred to
sheltering organizations to be adopted into good homes. Healthy adult
cats unsocialized to humans are returned to their familiar habitat under
the lifelong care of their original caretakers. |
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Feral Fixers,
NFP, is a certified 501c3 corporation - EIN Number 13-4364615 |
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