Project CATSNIP! gets off the ground
Our running joke in rescue is that we do this for the big bucks. Everyone truly in rescue knows what a BIG running joke that is.
So our feral cat coordinator calls me Wednesday night and tells me this story of how she managed to stumble upon a feral colony the week before. Well it's a little more involved than that, but that's the gist. Her first visit counted 22 cats/kittens. With a little help from a concerned citizen, 6 of the cats have already been trapped, spayed/neutered and released.
I don't do ferals. I don't have the patience. But we all have our gifts, so I promised to give it my best shot and put together a program for her. That's one of my strong suits - problem solving. Give me a problem and I can generally find a way to start a systematic approach to fixing it and delegating lots of people to help us. It's how our feral cat program got started. When we first started PCR, we'd come from a group that didn't really do ferals and some of our volunteers were doing a lot of work with ferals. It made sense to combine our knowledge, resources, and manpower. So I gave her a program, hosted a fundraiser, gave her a sustainable budget, and off she went. Like I said, I don't do ferals. She does. That's why she's in charge of the program and I just make them up.
As a group, we don't have the resources to do TNR on a colony this large, and most private citizens don't have the financing to do it. So Project CATSNIP! came to be. The goal is to fund a community program where feral colonies can be systematically managed by a trained caretaker, with financial and moral support.
We sat on the phone for about 30 minutes playing with names, acronyms, cutesy phrases etc. Everyone who knows me personally knows that my favorite rescue word is speuter, a totally made up word that's a combination of spay and neuter - you don't "fix" cats, they aren't broken. Alter and sterilize just sound silly, so I like speuter. Sponsor a speuter was born, and I wanted something to do with feeding and the word colony. My poor brain wasn't coming up with anything. I also need a whole project title, and I liked catsnip - the whole word play with catnip, and snip (sending my fosters in to be snip snipped is another of my fun phrases). I needed something for "A" and "I" so I turned to one of my greatest resources - Craigslist! Within another hour, I had my A, my I, the Colony Chuckwagon, and a covered wagon logo to boot. I love those CLers. I called my feral cat coordinator back and sent her the logo. She loved it, and the name, and everything about it. (It's not only her job to be the feral cat coordinator but to love all of my ideas!)
Within 48 hours of having a catchy name, and 2 funding options, she's already run around showing off the logo and explaining the program. When I saw her tonight, she had 2 $100 donations already - and an update: Today's count was 30 cats. So we have a lot of work to do. But it's a good time of year to start - before kitten season. I don't even have the website finished yet and she's raising money already!
We ask that you join us on this journey, and learn what it really means to systematically do TNR on a colony, and then manage that colony. Read the blogs, watch the videos, and see the photos. TNR and feral cat management has to be 50% work and 50% education, in order for us to stop the needless killing of cats. When we're done with this project and if it is successful, we will have the opportunity to take on another colony, and another after that.
So our feral cat coordinator calls me Wednesday night and tells me this story of how she managed to stumble upon a feral colony the week before. Well it's a little more involved than that, but that's the gist. Her first visit counted 22 cats/kittens. With a little help from a concerned citizen, 6 of the cats have already been trapped, spayed/neutered and released.
I don't do ferals. I don't have the patience. But we all have our gifts, so I promised to give it my best shot and put together a program for her. That's one of my strong suits - problem solving. Give me a problem and I can generally find a way to start a systematic approach to fixing it and delegating lots of people to help us. It's how our feral cat program got started. When we first started PCR, we'd come from a group that didn't really do ferals and some of our volunteers were doing a lot of work with ferals. It made sense to combine our knowledge, resources, and manpower. So I gave her a program, hosted a fundraiser, gave her a sustainable budget, and off she went. Like I said, I don't do ferals. She does. That's why she's in charge of the program and I just make them up.
As a group, we don't have the resources to do TNR on a colony this large, and most private citizens don't have the financing to do it. So Project CATSNIP! came to be. The goal is to fund a community program where feral colonies can be systematically managed by a trained caretaker, with financial and moral support.
We sat on the phone for about 30 minutes playing with names, acronyms, cutesy phrases etc. Everyone who knows me personally knows that my favorite rescue word is speuter, a totally made up word that's a combination of spay and neuter - you don't "fix" cats, they aren't broken. Alter and sterilize just sound silly, so I like speuter. Sponsor a speuter was born, and I wanted something to do with feeding and the word colony. My poor brain wasn't coming up with anything. I also need a whole project title, and I liked catsnip - the whole word play with catnip, and snip (sending my fosters in to be snip snipped is another of my fun phrases). I needed something for "A" and "I" so I turned to one of my greatest resources - Craigslist! Within another hour, I had my A, my I, the Colony Chuckwagon, and a covered wagon logo to boot. I love those CLers. I called my feral cat coordinator back and sent her the logo. She loved it, and the name, and everything about it. (It's not only her job to be the feral cat coordinator but to love all of my ideas!)
Within 48 hours of having a catchy name, and 2 funding options, she's already run around showing off the logo and explaining the program. When I saw her tonight, she had 2 $100 donations already - and an update: Today's count was 30 cats. So we have a lot of work to do. But it's a good time of year to start - before kitten season. I don't even have the website finished yet and she's raising money already!
We ask that you join us on this journey, and learn what it really means to systematically do TNR on a colony, and then manage that colony. Read the blogs, watch the videos, and see the photos. TNR and feral cat management has to be 50% work and 50% education, in order for us to stop the needless killing of cats. When we're done with this project and if it is successful, we will have the opportunity to take on another colony, and another after that.
Labels: colony, feral cats, purrfect cat rescue, rescue, TNR
posted by Purrfect Cat Rescue @ 8:59 PM
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