Dealing with so many cats and people, you never know what will happen next. There are so many generous, caring people who are so grateful for the work that we do, they make it easy to keep going on.
And then. Today, while trying to trap a mom cat, a caretaker trapped a cat that seemed very friendly. One of our volunteers transported it to me while the caretaker continued to try to trap her target cat. We scanned the cat, found the AVID chip. Called AVID. They had sold the chips to some middle company, who had then sold it to a veterinarian. So, on the third call, the vet’s office was able to identify who the cat belonged to and called them to let them know we had their cat. Usual process. The call I got was from someone very upset as they have been letting the cat outside for years, have always let their cat outside and how could we spirit the cat away like this? I tried to explain but they were just too upset. They demanded to come get their cat immediately so I gave them directions. Dreading their arrival, not because we were in the wrong but because we never want to upset anyone and this clearly was not going to go well.
By the time they arrived, they had come to realize that if the cat had really been missing for more than an hour or two, if it had been days or weeks, they would have been overjoyed to hear from us! And they gave us a donation and promised to try to keep the cat inside, its just they spoil the dickens out of her and give her anything she wants, even if it is going outside! We hugged and parted company on very good terms. Ya just never know.
I may be biased, but I think it shows what an overwhelmingly good thing TNR is. We educate people every day, we save lives and we build relationships.
(Oh, and before they thought better of it, they ripped us on Facebook but were going back to correct it – so if you see it, all is good now.)
Limited Only By Our Resources
In October, we TNR’d 154 cats. That is just amazing, isn’t it?
This is with a skeleton crew of 7 transporters and 4 people who can trap for those who cannot trap for themselves. And many times these people do both transport and trap (and foster for that matter).
With more manpower we could do so much more as we are definitely not limited by the number of cats available. The phone never stops ringing and it is impossible to keep up with the calls, some people may wait weeks for the opportunity to get their ferals in. To illustrate, we use over 3,000 minutes on our cell phone every month, so that is an average of 1 to 2 hours every day just on the phone.
We work around slots available at PAWS, our transporter’s schedules and my schedule in order to plan on when cats can come in. Some weeks we may be at PAWS every day they are open, some weeks we cannot go at all.
More cats could go into PAWS or Tree House, who we now use occasionally, if we had more volunteers to transport to and from the clinics.
We have 5 constant fosters. And most of them also do trapping or transporting. If we had more fosters, we could possibly pull more friendlies & kittens from the outside and get them into shelters.
We could do so much more if we had the volunteers to support the volume that is out there! Please consider volunteering for Feral Fixers!
Our Thanks
As I said at the beginning of this letter, people are very generous. And even if it wasn’t November, I would have to thank all the generous donors who made our Celebrate 2000! fundraiser such a success!
Our Celebrate 2000! matching funds fundraiser raised a total of $2,240 and with the original pledge of $1,000, we received a whopping $3,240 as a result of so many generous people responding to our request! We received many donations by mail, once again it was a pleasure to go to the P.O. Box.
Thank you to everyone who donated and passed on the information! You made a huge difference!
Come To Our Bazaar!
Shop for the holidays early on Sunday, November 7th at the Feral Fixers Bazaar located at the VFW Post 2801, 39 E St Charles Rd, Villa Park 10AM to 2PM. We are hosting a wide variety of home party consultants, there should be something there for everyone! Bring an item from our Wish List and come join the fun!
Again, our thanks to everyone who helps us, by donations, volunteering or spreading the word of TNR, we couldn’t do this without you!
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!