Cherished Cats Rescue Alliance

 As we all eagerly look forward into 2022, we wanted to take a glance back at all your support helped make possible in 2021. Thanks to our amazing network of fosters, we rescued more than 230 cats and kittens, the vast majority of which have been adopted. Many of those adoptions happened at The Scratching Post, where we had over 2,000 visitors in 2021 despite the continued challenges posed by the on-going pandemic. On the Trap-Neuter-Release side, we covered the costs of more than 250 spay/neuter surgeries and vaccinations, continuing our work toward reducing the over-population of community cats in our area. We also provided varying degrees of logistical support for many of those 250 cats, from loaning traps to doing the trapping and transporting. In short, it has been both an amazing and exhausting year. Amidst those anonymous numbers are a number of individual stories that serve as great reminders of what makes the exhaustion worth it…

Turnout came to us in the summer with two significant wounds on his neck, one of which had been invaded by an opportunistic warble. Because his wounds appeared to have originated as a bite, Turnout had to serve a lengthy quarantine period, but eventually he made it to The Scratching Post, where his forever family found him quickly!

2021 also brought us two newborn kittens without a mother to care for them. One of our amazing fosters stepped up without hesitation, despite the long odd, and longer hours. To make matters more interesting, one of the kittens had twisted legs that required regular taping and physical therapy to give him a chance of ever walking normally. Although Nugget did eventually lose a portion of one of his back feet, both he and his brother THRIVED, and are now living the good life together with their forever family.

Another set of kittens were born overnight in a trap to a momma that was to be spayed as a trap-neuter-release. Perhaps it was the stress, or maybe she was just young, but she was a reluctant mother at best. With some veterinary support, including fluids and B-vitamins, and some patience, she did eventually nurse and care for her brood, but a whole lot of bottle feeding made their survival possible. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of their inadvertent foster, all five kittens not only survived, but thrived, and the last two recently joined their forever homes.

Amazing as all that is, the pièce de résistance for 2021 is undoubtedly our work on a large colony of cats in Lewisburg. We were contacted about the situation in July, and the need for our help was readily apparent. SO. MANY. CATS. The people caring for them had done an excellent job keeping them well fed and socializing them, but had not realized the speed at which cats reproduce. And reproduce they did! In six months we removed over sixty (yes, 60!) cats from the property, and vast majority of which were friendly and adoptable. A few at a time cats were seen by a veterinarian, spayed or neutered and vaccinated, and then they made their way to The Scratching Post. To date, there remains just one cat to be neutered, and a total of only three will be returned to the property to live out their lives. Among the sixty cats we rescued were twenty-five kittens and their mothers, with the remainder ranging in age from about a year to two or three. We shudder to think what this situation would have looked like in six months to a year if left to continue the exponential growth absent our intervention. Instead, sixty cats are now living the good life, and hundreds of kittens will not be born into an untenable situation. A win for the cats and a win for Lewisburg!

While this obviously doesn’t capture every cat that entered our care in 2021, we hope it paints a picture of what your support made possible. Sadly, there is much more work to do- we receive an average of requests to help 40-50 cats every month, and while we are not able to help them all we will continue to do our best within the confines of maintaining our own sanity and well-being. Want to help? Email us at CherishedCats2017@gmail.com, or sign up to be a volunteer at The Scratching Post. Of course, we also welcome donations as well as social media support for Cherished Cats on Facebook and Instagram. You can also follow The Scratching Post on Facebook and Instagram (because there’s nothing better than MORE cats on your newsfeeds!)