3/14/24 – ADOPT – 12 ferals, 6 male, 6 female.

3/14/24 – DCAS – 1 feral male.

3/21/24 – DCAS – 15 ferals, 8 males (1 already neutered), 7 females. The already neutered male was part of another Barn Cat program and had left his relocation site, we are working on relocating him yet again.

3/28/24 – DCAS – 14 ferals, 7 males (1 already neutered), 7 females.

4/4/24 – DCAS – 5 friendlies, 8 ferals, 8 males (1 already neutered, 1 euthanized), 5 females. Ferals can be subject to so many devastating injuries, so glad we were able to help the injured male, he was in a devastated condition.

Total: 44 cats for March, 12 cats for April, 101 for 2024 and 14,981 to date!!!

We do not have s/n slots next week so perhaps we will reach 15,000 on 4/25!

Cats from 3/21 trip.		Looks quiet and surreal, doesn't it? People are so surprised at how quiet ferals can be! 3/28/24.

Time May Change, Cats Not So Much

3/7/24 – DCAS – 3 ferals, 2 males, 1 female. One male had an injured paw, received Convenia and we’re holding onto him for a few days for recovery. This time of year there is a lot of fighting between males and often they are chomping down on each other’s paws. The other male had taken up residence in a garage. That’s what we’ve been working on during our “down” time – injured and garage cats for the most part.

3/8/24 – GEAH – 1 male feral – had a pretty big wound under his left ear. We will be held for a while as well, required real stitches which can sometimes come out on their own, we’ll wait and see how he does.

Total: 4 cats for March, 49 for 2024, 14,929 since our start.

Looking back on our stats – in July, 2014 we TNR’d 249 cats in one month! Almost 1,300 for the year! We had almost unlimited surgery availability in the early days. Hoping we can get back there some day!

Next week our surgery availability numbers go up a little and there are MORE than enough cats waiting for the services we provide!

As Many as Possible As Soon As Possible

One of the 3/7 trip ferals - one reason we go thru towels - they manage to drag them inside no matter the small gap in the door!		Cats for 3/7/24 & 3/8/24.

Help Us Out on Good Deeds Day!

Sunday, 4/14/24 11am – 3pm, 330 Eisenhower Ln N, Lombard!

Need an excuse for Spring Cleaning? Go thru those towels that get shoved to the back of the shelf – we can always use more towels as they tend to get shredded and worn out when placed over traps.

Not everyone gets newspapers these days so we try to keep a big supply on hand for the hundreds of cats we process every year. A layer 3 sheets deep go on the tables, we use a lot inside the traps, each week we can go thru many grocery bags worth (our preferred method of storing) to take care of the multiple cats we may have on hand before and after surgery. Collect from your neighbors and family!

Consult our Wish List, on our website and on Amazon, Chewy and Walmart – we try to keep them updated as much as possible. Our needs are basic, food, cleaning supplies are at the top. We can always use gift items that go on to be used in fundraisers. Share our information with friends, family and coworkers!

Fill out a Volunteer application for an ongoing donation of your time, Feral Fixers is supported by a wide variety of skills and resources. Feel good going forward!

There is no limit to the good you can do!

Make it Feel Good Day!

TNR Workshop

Last year just zipped by and we did not host a TNR Workshop! Everything is starting so early because of the weather; we will host a TNR Workshop kind of early as well.

Sunday, March 24^th, 1 – 3pm at our building, 330 Eisenhower Ln N, Lombard.

We will have the various traps and equipment options, brief demonstration, and answer questions. The more educated caretakers are in trapping, the more likely we are to get those cats trapped and prevent more!

As Many As Possible As Soon As Possible

One feral and carrier ready to transport the friendly		We had an opportunity to nab 6 cats who have good shelter - the 4 females could have had a big impact!

Good Deeds Day!

Want to feel good? On Sunday, 4/14/24 11am – 3pm, bring donations from our wish list to our building at 330 Eisenhower Ln N, Lombard!

Good Deeds Day is an international event that promotes acts of kindness and generosity. Each year, hundreds of thousands put into practice the simple idea that every single person can do something good, be it large or small, to improve the lives of others and positively change the world.

For Feral Fixers, supplying us with items from our wish list can make a huge difference! With the huge numbers of cats that we hope to trap and neuter, we will need lots of newspaper! We do go thru many towels – ferals destroy towels on their traps all the time – please don’t buy new towels, we prefer used! Collect from neighbors, family and co-workers. Check out our wish list for items that can be purchased. Be creative and hold an event yourself to benefit Feral Fixers. Promote our information thru social media, solicit items for our future events from businesses and contacts. There is no limit to the good you can do!

A cat arrived strapped into a milk crate that we then transferred into a trap.

Shanghai, China Creates Cat Sanctuary

In response to the overwhelming number of stray and abandoned cats due to post Covid shutdown, a sanctuary for strays has been created in Shanghai, Cat Island. Thru the efforts of individuals, the cats are trapped, neutered and housed with the goal of finding adoptive homes as the attitude towards owning pets changes. They have an average of 400 cats at a time. China does not have the many animal protection laws that the United States has, so this is an innovative, grass-roots project.

We never know what we will encounter - super feral, fearful stray, dumped friendly, or what they will become in a very short time.

Happy Leap Year!

Extra day, more surgeries, right?

2/23/24 – ADOPT – 10 ferals, 4 males, 6 females.

2/26/24 – DCAS – 2 feral males. One cat limping, the other took up residence in a garage. Garages can make trapping so much easier and then, also, the cats won’t LEAVE! The limping cat may have a fracture, he’s getting cage rest but will probably have to go into the vet, but usually they have to heal on their own, which takes time. Ferals do not do well with splints and he is very feral.

2/29/24 – DCAS – 2 feral females. One was limping but nothing significant was found. The other female had been producing kittens for a very long time and there was an opportunity to trap her. Beautiful long-hair brown tabby but definitely feral.

We also trapped a female cat that had an injured tail, huge cat, thought she might be pregnant, but found spay scar & tattoo and she is now chipped and had surgery on her tail – we treat many cats that do not go into our final surgery totals but receive the care they need.

Total: 33 for February, 45 for 2024, 14,925 since our beginning.

15,000 is in our sights!

2023 – What A Year

Together, volunteers, donors, caretakers, everyone involved with Feral Fixers, we have accomplished 926 spay/neuters of feral and stray cats and kittens. With the help of our dedicated adoption and foster and animal care volunteers, we have found homes for 360 cats and kittens. In just this year, you can see the impact as we reduced the volume of cats outdoors, we reduced the overpopulation crisis from every direction, helping felines and humans alike.

The challenges have been immense. 

Kitten numbers have increased dramatically –societal changes may be the biggest impact: lack of vet access, money, movement of our population – combining households, isolation and hoarding, etc. People are actually paying more attention to the cats outside and are discovering the pregnant cat, the litter of kittens much more readily than in the past which results in overall increased volume that we are contacted about. Every shelter is full. Everyone is doing their best to save every cat they can. Adults and kittens are becoming friendly at an increased pace. Years ago, a feral was a feral was a feral. Not anymore. Kittens sometimes are friendly from the time they are trapped, adults will have a complete turnaround to being friendly. National organizations are seeing this and the only advice they can offer is that even if a cat is friendly, put it back outside – there just aren’t enough homes.

Volunteers. The data can be looked at in many different ways, but finding information that DuPage County ranked 2^nd in 102 Illinois Counties of charities per square mile illustrates why it is so difficult finding and maintaining volunteers. No one seems to have as much time as we used to. There are so many choices of where to spend that valuable volunteer time. Our lives can change in an instant and our personal responsibilities must take priority. Feral Fixers has wonderful volunteers, and we treasure them every day. We need more, the volunteer staff is not a constant and can change quickly. From trapping to transport, fostering and shifts of cat care at the building, cleaning – oh my, the cleaning! We do need volunteers who can snuggle kittens just as much as we need those who can sweep floors and do laundry. Social people who can interact with adopters on adoption days, help with events, host events! Everyone has their own strengths and abilities, please share them with us!

Need everywhere. We can average five calls a day for help.

*Discovered kittens under the shed, come help. *My mother let a pregnant cat into her house, come trap and take the kittens. *My cat has lost its mind and is attacking me, help. *I have 15 cats in and around my house (usually results in 60+ cats). *I live outside your area, but I can bring the cats to you. *Been feeding a cat for 2 years, not neutered, now he’s injured from fighting, come help. On social media, you may often see “call Feral Fixers, they will help you” and we do help so many!

With all these challenges we must remember the impact we have had, can you imagine how many cats would be roaming the streets, producing more and more, the suffering we have alleviated, feline and human alike! We have much more work to do but what a difference has been accomplished! 

You - donors, volunteers, caretakers, are all responsible for the huge difference Feral Fixers has achieved in the last 16+ years!

What Can We Expect In 2023?

We continue to face the unknown. Who could have expected that across the nation, we are short 15,000 veterinarians? Who could have expected that our nation could be short millions of spay/neuter surgeries? So many different factors are affecting daily lives, it will be interesting to see the impact on cats outdoors, how many kittens will be born to these unneutered females still roaming that no one was able to get to. Prices have gone up for cat food, cat litter, gasoline to take them to appointments & adoptions, and on and on. What can we do? We can continue to get as many spay/neuter appointments as we possibly can and to FILL those appointments, making caretakers aware that they must contact us as soon as a cat is consistent in attendance. It is the ONLY way to lower costs in the future. Once those kittens arrive, we will care for them, using resources for current day expenses, not for preventing even greater expenditures in the future – that is unsustainable and returns us to the past when feral cats were euthanized regularly.

Trapping will resume around the end of March, beginning of April. Keep an eye out for ferals in your area, talk to your neighbors, help us help you to care for those cats.

What Can You Do?

The Amazon Smile donation in November, which covered purchases made between July 1, 2022, and September 30, 2022, came to $606.70. That means that our donors spent $121,340 in that time period and .5% was donated by Amazon Smile – Yay! Use AmazonSmile and designate Feral Fixers – could not be an easier way to raise funds!

Visit our wish lists at Amazon & Chewy – we always need food; canned food in particular goes fast when you are supporting so MANY kittens! Gift cards allow us to purchase what our greatest need at the time is – paper towels, bleach, laundry detergent, litter boxes – amazing the variety of things we purchase to keep going! 

Spread our information to coworkers, family, social media – we have donors across the country! Cats have a ripple effect, they don’t stay in one place and affect wider resources than those on their street, in their town, in their county – even in their state! New people are volunteering with us due to sharing information, but we need more volunteers, many more. Trappers, transporters, cleaners in the building, animal care in the building, fosters, event volunteers, the list goes on. You tell us what you want to do to help, and we try to make that fit for both of our benefits!

Frosty Claws in 2023 

We seem to be returning to some degree of normalcy. As a result, we will be holding our 2023 Frosty Claws on Sunday, January 15^th from 12 noon to 4pm at the Villa Park VFW. We may have huge attendance that day because of skipping years, please be patient. This is an event for our caretakers, adopters, donors, to talk about cats and network with some fundraising and food. We are about to start assembling our Silent Auction and door prize items – we may not have as much “stuff” as in previous years – we will post items as they are created, as soon as we have a chance. We look forward to seeing everyone who can attend!

We appreciate all the people who have continued to care about the cats. Many new caretakers had the time to resolve the cats around them. Extra time spent at home led to lots of new fosters and some foster failures as those families adopted their fosters, unable to part with them. People spending more time at home led to many more kittens being brought in and the longest "kitten season" we've ever experienced with the extended balmy weather. We formed tighter bonds with the area rescues as we all went thru the same challenges.

All those kittens took a toll on our fosters, our s/n transporters and Sue, our adoption counselor. There were individual kittens that actually received 40 – 50 inquiries EACH! But each of these kittens go to the best home possible for them as individuals and the alumni stories we receive validate the effort put into that goal. Please take the time to read the foster story included in this newsletter, we have some very impressive volunteers.

Thru it all we kept going as our physical interactions with people are limited and usually outdoors. A few fosters experienced COVID, most of us have been able to remain healthy.

Our ability to fundraise has been greatly impacted as cat people are much more social with other cat people than one might think and they greatly enjoy our in-person events!

A Few Notes About the Building

We try to wash and disinfect our traps before they go into Winter storage so they can be used immediately in the Spring. We were able to transport them all to the building, the railing spacing on the ramp made it very easy to get them into the building, the new washtub was able to hold 4 traps (3 large, 1 small) at once, so simple! And there was plenty of room for spraying with a blast of disinfectant, rinsing and shipping off to storage!

Fundraising

Just a few more days of our Black Cat Giving Tuesday Fundraiser. We hope the 2021 Feral Fixers Happy New Year! Raffle helps to replace our Frosty Claws event and provide something our donors will enjoy participating in.

For many reasons, I receive emails from a great many non-profits. That means that I see how they promote their organizations and ask for money. We do our very best to be different, low-volume and specific about our needs. I can't imagine how weary some of you must be, bombarded on a daily basis by every group for human, environmental, political and animal needs. I could say negative things about those other groups but would instead reaffirm that funds donated to Feral Fixers work to benefit the cats in this geographic area. Surgeries, medications, food, transportation, supplies, a building to house them in, it all goes towards the cats. The percentage of funds used for fundraising (administrative costs are often a high percentage of total costs) is minimal. We adapt ideas and make our asks as enjoyable as possible 😸. We will never be able to give up fundraising but promise to keep the annoyance to a minimum!

We have personal relationships with our donors and we appreciate them so much!

Happy Holidays!

We wish you a Wonderful Holiday and the Best Possible New Year!

Thank you all for your personal messages this year, they are greatly appreciated. Wish we could thank you all individually!