12/05/2025
Who's guilty of falling off the face of the FB world to try to survive tough times and rough days? We are!! 🙋♀️ I wanted to take a moment to update our amazing little army of supporters on where we're at right now.
First, it feels silly to say "we're closed" in any capacity while we continue to work so hard every day. However, we ARE partially closed. Complete closure is not possible unless we were willing to abandon our countless colony cats to fend for themselves, which we are not. Hopefully we can always maintain enough support that it never comes to that.
We are partially closed in that we are unable to provide any type of assistance for community members. No trapping assistance. No TNR outside of existing LAL colonies. No spay/neuter or transport assistance. No rescue placement assistance. No vetting assistance. No jumping in and interceding for other colony caretakers. No overnight, short term, or long term healing care for cats that belong to others. We have done so much of this without a break for 10+ years. I can't remember the last time we had no patients, no one on meds, no one needing special care and TLC. We sadly have nothing left to give at this time. Saying it "out loud" is hard, but necessary.
We are currently lacking some big things. One is a reliable vehicle for all this work. In the last 11 years, we have driven 3 nice, new, personal vehicles straight into the ground. All for helping cats and cat people. We have spent hours on the road every single day. We put tens of thousands of miles and copious amounts of wear and tear on each vehicle we've used, creating an ongoing cycle of personal problems. We cannot do that anymore. (We hope to have a special fundraiser later this year to help us acquire a reliable compact cargo van.) Another thing we have to focus on is a suitable holding space for our TNR and feral healing efforts. (We have the new space, thankfully, but it will require a lot of time, energy, and funds to get it pulled together, all of which we're struggling for right now.) And another thing, we lack hands on deck. Our tiny team is spread too thin to focus on having big fundraisers to address our deficiencies, or to focus on forming new, helpful partnerships. We specifically need people with the initiative to plan and execute fundraisers and pull together food drives and donations.
As I like to say, this work pays nothing but costs everything. No one's getting paid over here. We have never had enough money in the bank to cover certain needs as an organization, so getting things done like we have has always relied on major personal sacrifice. We have to draw a line somewhere and can't continue with so much of that sacrifice. Especially while being met with so much unkindness from so many community members and recipients of the very help we fight and bend over backwards to provide. Some of the recent meanness, threats, and entitledness have really cut to the heart and been hard to shake off.
Assuming we can continue to maintain a small army of support, we will work on reassessing the community-serving aspects of our mission & how to make a lasting impact without taking endless personal hits. There is so much need for stray & feral cats + people overwhelmed by their cat population numbers. There are so many possibilities to address those needs, but we can't focus on any of it while struggling to get cat food with one foot in the grave and pennies in the bank. We see the absolute worst out on the streets every day. We have spent unpaid full time job/overtime hours doing this for over a decade. It has taken a toll. Compassion fatigue and post-traumatic stress are real and serious things that I never would have dreamed could plague me personally in such a way. We are overdue for a small reprieve of less work and some time devoted to healing.
Our day to day continues with the feeding, care, and colony management of a whole big bunch of cats. This alone is a full time endeavor, requiring hours daily and thousands of dollars in food, supplies, fuel, and medical every month. We take our commitment to our wildie baby cats very seriously. They count on us and we love them. All fight is currently reserved for them. ❤️
What can you do to help?
Host a fundraiser or food drive. Donate food or funds. Help us achieve some semblance of food security. Like, comment on, and share our future posts to help make sure more people see our work & needs. Be understanding of our limitations. Be kind. 💞
