We may be pushing the envelope in more than one way this month – two events, trying to TNR as many cats as possible and coping with a flood of friendlies, all at the same time!
We scheduled Celebrate 3000! on National Feral Cat Day as it seemed a perfect opportunity to multi-task celebrating the milestone of 3,000 cats neutered, our fourth anniversary, a National event – and we get to eat breakfast!
Our Shop4Strays Bazaar is October 23rd, just one week later, so that people can take their time and enjoy a more relaxing event, while getting things done well in advance of the holidays! We’ve added a Bake Sale this year and we have some fabulous bakers supplying the goodies!
Both of these events are opportunities to meet other feral cat caretakers and to talk to Feral Fixers volunteers while helping us to raise funds to continue our efforts!
Could you put a friendly cat back outside?
I’ve been asked, when I talk about how many friendlies we encounter, “What happened to the “R” in TNR?”
It just ain’t that easy, come to find out. For every 20 cats we trap, we’re ending up with four to six kittens or adult friendlies. That is HUGE. We’ve filled every foster, caretakers are fostering kittens themselves, we have such a good reputation of helping outside cats that want homes that it may be our undoing.
Each friendly costs us $55 in services. Shelters are already strapped, they cannot possibly reimburse us these costs when they take our cats for adoption. Caretakers who cannot afford even the $35 donation for a feral cannot afford $55 each for the neutering of 4 kittens.
Some organizations adopt a policy of just waiting until the kittens are older and beyond taming and treating them as ferals. We’ve done the opposite and neutered each colony as soon as possible, removing the kittens.
In this year alone, there has probably been over 100 ferals and friendlies that no donations were received to cover the expenses. While we have so many generous donors, demand is exceeding money supply.
It is rare to find a charitable organization these days that is flush with cash and I hate to join the ranks of those who ask so often for more donations, but I see no other way to continue to reduce the number of cats who overcrowd our shelters and reduce the number of cats euthanized due to lack of homes. As a result, our newest fundraiser -
Feral Fixers “Chip Pins”
Of the 3000+ cats we have neutered, over 2,000 do not have a collar to attach a microchip tag to. We’ve kept those tags over the years and would like to offer them as a memento of a donation to help other cats.
At Celebrate 3000 and the Feral Fixers Bazaar, we will have our new “Chip Pins” - for a $55 donation you will receive a pin with the microchip of a feral cat that we have TNR’d with its basic information of name, description and town that it lives in. We hope that wearing these pins will encourage more discussion with people you meet and you can be proud that you’ve supported another cat on its way to a home. Our thanks to Recycled2New for their help in creating these mementos!
Hope to see you!
(Click on the picture thumbnail of the "Chip Pin" to see a full-size version of the picture)