Hope to see you all!

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!

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 712 cats spayed/neutered so far.

This brings us to a total of 3,193 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.

Not only does the United States military state unequivocally that "We own the night", the same slogan might apply to an army of feral cats that live at Disneyland.

From an article on the Best Friends website:

"Disneyland, "the happiest place on earth," is home to more than just a wealth of fun attractions and memorable Disney characters - it is home to at least 200 feral cats that roam the premises at night. The cats began venturing into the park many years ago when Disneyland first opened. However, instead of treating the wandering felines as a nuisance, Disneyland decided to regard them as a potential benefit.

Back in 2001, Best Friends Catnippers learned about the numerous free roaming felines at Disneyland from a concerned volunteer. Soon after, Disneyland's environmental division permitted Catnippers to bring in a team of veterinarians to spay and neuter the cats on premise...Every night, when all the diligent employees come out to make the park crystal clean, the free roaming felines partake in the clean up too. As an outdoor resort, Disneyland is bound to have some unwanted visitors occasionally. But Disneyland's cats, as natural pest exterminators, do their crucial part in helping to keep the resort rodent-free..."

This is so cool - you can read the entire article here.

 

From an article in the June 9, 2011 edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

"The gray tabby arched her back and hissed at the hand holding the syringe poking into her cage.

She had spent her life on the streets but was hungry or curious enough to walk into a trap to eat the bait. Within 48 hours, she would be back out in the wild.

But on a recent day the cat ended up at the Wisconsin Humane Society, along with four other feral cats captured by trained caregivers. The sedative administered by a veterinary technician calmed the tabby down, and when she was picked up that afternoon she was a changed feline.

Under the care of the veterinary staff at the humane society, the cat was vaccinated and spayed, a microchip tracking device implanted under her fur, nails clipped, and a topical flea treatment administered. The tip of her left ear also was trimmed like a kitty tattoo that marks her as a participant of the "trap-neuter-return" program for feral cats.

Though some communities handle feral animals by capturing and euthanizing them, many humane societies and animal shelters curb the population by spaying and neutering..."

It's a great article, and talks about some of the same issues that we at Feral Fixers run into in our local efforts - read the full article 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 Keychain 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.