Milestones

As I'm writing this on August 31st, we've neutered yet another 30 cats today and a quick count of the results show that only 9 of them were males! By Spring those 21 females could have produced another hundred cats and so on, and so on...

We are asked repeatedly why we do what we do and can't we take a break for awhile? The potential for the numbers to blow up quickly and to have to seemingly do it all over again is too great. We are in for the long haul, as evidenced by our achieving

Over 3,000 cats neutered!

and we are only approaching our fourth anniversary of Feral Fixers as an organization!

Much To Do

September and October are going to be hoppin'!

In September we will be at three different events and we have a Sweet Tomatoes fundraiser.

In October we will be hosting a breakfast for Celebrate 3000 on National Feral Cat Day, October 16th, followed very quickly by our second annual "Shop For Strays" Bazaar on October 23rd!

We hope to see a lot of our supporters at these events, it's great to get caught up on what's happening in the lives of the people and the cats we've helped!

Shelter Medicine

Our friends at PAWS recently hosted a symposium on shelter medicine that I was able to attend. Through grants from Maddie's Fund and in conjunction with Purdue University Veterinary Medicine veterinary students doing research at PAWS, they establishing new and useful data for the care of shelter animals. While Feral Fixers does not have a shelter, we do care for many cats on a temporary basis that are ill and injured.

A very interesting study on FIV+ cats seems to indicate that in a household that has a mix of FIV+ and negative cats, the negatives are not acquiring the virus. As there is such a stigma associated with a positive FIV test, I will be watching this study and crossing my fingers - for four more years til the results are in! FIV+ cats have never been studied before so this is truly ground-breaking!

Additional research is being done on just what upper respiratory viruses and bacteria are present in shelter cats and which antibiotics tackle those causes the best. Very interesting!

Eventually

We may not be able to help everyone who contacts us right away, but we seem to get everywhere eventually!

We were contacted last week by a neighbor of someone we helped in '08. They just weren't able to get every cat and said there were several caretakers in the neighborhood. Well, we did another cat in '09 and nothing more until this week. One of the neighbors has talked to everyone in the neighborhood and they are willing to resolve this now. Unfortunately, there are now 20 cats that come to just one of these houses, so we may be looking at a big project but it will not get any better without intervention!

The gentleman who called was surprised by my reaction when he told me his address, I was so glad as I knew the problem had most likely intensified in the last two years!

But we will make kittens a rarity, eventually!

We are in touch with almost all of the shelters in the DuPage area in one way or another.  Fostering is down, not as many people are doing it this year.  Most shelters are closing their doors to intake as they cannot support the animals they currently have.  For shelters that do store front adoptions, without a brick and mortar shelter, they need to have at least as many fosters as they have animals in those cages in case they get sick or need a break from being too long at the stores.  Brick and mortar shelters are limited because most animals need to go into foster and be "tested" in a home situation.  They need to know how a cat is going to behave in a home so that when they adopt it out, they can be reasonably certain that the cat will use the litter box, not attack other animals or children or climb the drapes.  Fostering is the proving ground prior to adoption.
 
What the lack of fosters means to us is that we CANNOT take in fully adoptable animals from the outside.  Every time we place kittens with a shelter, the same number show up, fresh from the outside.  There are long lines waiting to get in.
 
Adoptions are down.  The economy sucks.
 
If you have the ability, the room, the talent, please offer to foster.  If not for us, for any shelter close to your home.
 
We've asked for fosters before and ended up softening the wording, trying to be more positive, but it has not worked.  Every day, we have to make hard choices about who can have a home because we have nowhere to put these cats and kittens.
 
There are fewer cats than there would be if we had not begun almost four years ago.  Things are going to get harder before they get better.  And if you can play a part in things getting better, you will have our unlimited gratitude and the satisfaction of playing a part in making things better for cats all over DuPage.  It may just be one cat, one litter of kittens that you see in front of you, but look behind them at all the others that they symbolize.
 
Thank you so much, if you are reading this, you care.  Please pass on information about this enormous need to anyone you think can help.
 
Thank you.

Feral Fixers was founded in September of 2007. In that abbreviated first year, Feral Fixers had 86 cats spayed / neutered. In 2008, Feral Fixers had 525 cats spayed / neutered and in 2009, Feral Fixers had 868 cats spayed / neutered. In 2010, Feral Fixers had 1,002 cats spayed / neutered!  This year, Feral Fixers has had 614 cats spayed/neutered so far.

This brings us to a total of 3,095 cats. Clicking on the adding machine will send you to the Feral Fixers 'Statistics' page where you can see our progress, month-by-month, since we've started work.

Noche is a very vocal, people-oriented cat.  He showed up in a colony one day.  Feral Fixers had him fixed and then he was fostered out (for a very long time), waiting for the right opportunity for him.

Enter PURRS Naperville Animal Rescue organization.  A family who already had taken in one PURRS cat decided to give Noche a forever home too, with the result you see in the picture to the right (click on the picture to see a larger version).

 

Animal Services and Assistance Program (ASAP) recently won an online "Pepsi Refresh Project" voting contest to get animal cages donated to offices of veterinarians.  They are now in another online voting contest, this to ship 1,000,000 pounds (one million pounds!) of pet food to rural shelters.

You can visit their Facebook page to learn more about the project and how you can add your vote.  Vote early and often - it's a tradition around here!

Want to purchase something purr-fect for your cat-lover friends and help out Feral Fixers at the same time?  Just visit our CafePress store and Buy Something! In addition to the Coin Purse shown to the right, we have T-shirts, sweatshirts, aprons, hoodies, mouse pads, gym bags, messenger bags, coffee mugs, tote-bags, pet food bowls, etc. A portion of each sale goes to help us in our TNR efforts.

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.