DCAS Changes

Feral Fixers cannot wait for the completion of construction! They will be able to house more animals, increase adoptions, do more surgeries for Feral Fixers, improve the lives of animals all over DuPage! So glad to share this summary of the changes coming!

Lack Of Surgeries vs Weather

Never realized how much we count on the weather to keep the numbers of outside cats down. There is an enormous number of kittens expected while our access to spay/neuter has been reduced. We don’t usually kick into high gear until end of March at the earliest. There has been no reduction of calls this Winter. Unfortunately, we cannot return females with shaved tummies back outside, both sexes with vaccinations and therefore reduced immune systems, until the temperatures are reliably above freezing overnight. We cannot do more harm than good.

We are watching the weather closely, while working to get spay/neuter slots. Everyone is in the same boat. Veterinarians are burning out, switching fields, surgery space is limited.

Please be patient and bear with us as we tackle 2024 which looks like a very real challenge!

One of our recent Working Cat relocations, taking her job to heart!

2024 – What’s Happenin’ So Far

We have had to say “no” to so many people in the last two months. One of the most difficult things to think about is what will happen to those cats if we don’t help them? We hope a recent situation we worked on was not due to our saying “no” but we will never know. Got a call from a lady who walks her dog in a park. She found two very friendly younger cats, was very certain they had been dumped, was pretty sure of who had done it but didn’t have the address, just thought she knew the building the person might live in and was sure that person had moved that same day, called the police and called us. Luckily a volunteer was available to go over, in the meantime a CSO officer showed up with a carrier and they got an adult and 3 kittens (3 mos to 5 mos) into the carrier. There were more cats. The next day, three more kittens, same age. That evening a call from someone who had a cat laying in their yard – before we got back to them, they took it to a rescue who could warm it up and carer for it. Next day, CSO collected an adult that had been put in a crate on a patio, that cat went to DCAS, where it gave birth that evening and 5 kittens survived. Next day, a guy got another kitten in a carrier, brought it to us, gave him a trap and several days later he brought another kitten to us. These were all friendly cats. In all, 7 kittens went to ADOPT for s/n and they kept them for adoption and half were adopted very quickly. The adult female was very scared, she was very early pregnant so that would have been even more kittens, she got very sick and needed intravenous fluids and monitoring at the vet, she is at the building, finally eating well and settling in after her trauma. This dump of cats resulted in 16 in all. A CSO, 4 organizations, at least 3 concerned residents were involved. Cats do not do well in fending for themselves when put outside with no experience in the Winter.

The recent spay/neuters include a few remainders at sites needing relocation – the cats would be given carriers to keep warm as they acclimated to the new spot, cats that were inside houses, and the remaining unneutered cats we had on hand.

2/2/24 – ADOPT – 1 friendly, 1 feral, both male. Feral was relocated, friendly is in foster.

2/7/24 – ADOPT – 6 friendly, 2 feral, 2 female, 6 male. ADOPT kept 5 kittens for adoption from this trip. One of the ferals was relocated.

2/9/24 – ADOPT – 8 friendly, 1 feral, 6 female, 3 male. ADOPT kept 2 kittens for adoption. Included were a mom & kittens – in November the kittens had been born at our building in our TNR room and moved to the room we call Caturnity until they could all go to foster. Mom was very nice and recently adopted!

Total: 19 for February, 31 for 2024, 14,911 since our start.

ADOPT Trip		2/9 Trip to ADOPT