Feral Fixers was supposed to have a booth at the Molex Pet Fair on Friday, the 15th, and the DASA Expo on Saturday, the 16th. Unfortunately, the Molex Pet Fair was rained out. However, the DASA Expo was held (in sunny, but windy conditions) and Feral Fixers was there!
This was a big, successful event - over 50 groups participated. Shelters, Pet Rescues, Pet supply vendors, etc. were all represented. The Feral Fixers booth was non-stop busy all day. We never had more than 3-4 minutes go by without visitors. We collected donations, passed out business cards and fliers, answered questions and, in general, 'spread the word'. Everyone who came by was supportive - all of our visitors understood the value of Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) as an effective weapon against the problem of pet overpopulation.
Kurt Meyer and myself handled the booth duties. People reading this blog may remember Kurt as "Mr. October" - certainly some of our booth visitors did!
I've posted a couple of pictures from the event here in this blog post - more pictures are available in our Photo Gallery. The topmost picture is of Kurt (on the right) and myself. The bottom picture is another one of our booth. You can see Kurt in the back, holding the tent (it did fly away once on us - as did other tents like ours!) and, in front of the booth, is a drop-trap. Kurt brought this along and set it up and it proved to be a very effective tool in generating interest. Lots of people stopped by to ask questions about it. Thanks Kurt!
Also, in another example of how our organization continues to grow, while Kurt and I were manning the booth, Feral Fixers also had another 9 cats Spay/Neutered at the PAWS-Chicago Spay/Neuter clinic. One of our volunteers, Sue, drove the cats down in the morning, while our president, Tammy, picked them up in the evening. So, it was a successful day all around.
Our thanks to all of our friends (old and new) who came by the booth to say Hello. It's great to see how the word about Trap-Neuter-Return continues to spread. Thanks in part to TNR, some day in the not-too-far-distant-future, we may get to a day where every pet in America is wanted and the problem of pet overpopulation is ended once and for all.
(You can click on either picture thumbnail to see a larger version of the picture. Visit our Photo Gallery to see more pictures from the event.