Trying to get a little help...

Hi, my name is Mary and I have 5 cats and 3 kittens. I've rescued all of them from various places. I only own 3 of them. Blue and Mouse. They are brothers and were born in a barn. Also, I have Gremlin. My mom has one of his brothers and his name is Marshmellow. His other brother and two sisters all have good homes now. There is also Splash, who I rescued from the outside. He has no tail and was really mean at first. My oldest sister is susposed to own him, but for dumb reasons I have him here and take care of him also. The three kittens I also rescued from here and hope to find good homes for them. They are Scruff, who only has about a 3 inch tail, his sister Cookie who does have a tail, and Patch. Scruff and Cookie had patches of fur missing to where you could see only their skin and were covered in grease. I mean like car grease, not cooking grease. Cookie also had a flea collar and Scruff had a thick pink ring around his neck. Of course I cut it off of her. Patch has been rescued only a few days ago, he was completely infested in fleas and was being tossed around by some neighborhood kids. He didn't even know how to play, and still has some sudden aggression issues that I'm helping him to work through. I'm happy to say though that they are all doing fairly well. In the past couple years me and my sister have helped around eighty to one hundred mainly stray and feral cats to find homes. Unfortunately, my sister isn't helping anymore due to drugs and focusing soley on herself. We live in a Metropolitan Housing Complex where we're only allowed to have ONE animal. Obviously, I can't help it. We don't have a lot of money and have had numerous pregnant cats and litters. About a year ago we called a number in the paper that turned out to be "New Begginings". It's an older woman whose name is Nancy. She takes the strays that she finds to the vet and adopts them out to good homes. Checking up on them afterwards. She was kind enough to help us out, considering we are CONSTANTLY getting new additions because of the carelessness of other people here. We also feed the cats that we cannot take in due to no room. I hate to see them out there, but there's nothing I can do. At the moment Nancy is completely full, having three momma cats and altogether 10 kittens. Plus other adult males and females, and a couple kittens. She takes very good care of these animals and is being overwhelmed with the cats she has right now. She also has a friend, Vickie, who does the same thing and is also at her limit. We both live in Ohio. She lives in Dayton, and I live in Middletown. If there's anyone that may know someone who would like to adopt a cat or kitten please let me know. I want to do everything that I can to help her, she's done so much for me. I will talk to her and see if I can post her number if anyone replies to this post and would like to adopt. If there's anymore questions about her or anything please feel free to ask. I may only be 20, but I've dedicated my life to helping these poor little ones that most don't seem to care about. In my area the shelter will not even come to pick up a stray or injured cat. The police came to take "Smokey" to the shelter one night when someone who was drunk beat him to where he was suffering and bleeding. Unfortunately, he was so bad there is no doubt that he died on the way to the shelter. It's not fair that they should suffer so much because of stupidity. Another lady let both of her cats out because she says they were mean, (which I know for a fact is a lie) and now Buddy is suffering. He is feral now, and will most likely attack you if you try to pet him. But he has come a long way and will tolerate it so long. At present he has bad earmites, too thin, bloody sores on his ears, and a crick in his tail. The real reason is because she was going to have a baby and so she kicked them out. I have no idea where his sister is, she most likely died a few years ago. It breaks my heart every time I see an abandoned or abused animal. I do my best to take care of these guys, and Nancy does the most by getting their shots and spayed/neutered, and finding them good homes. I make them lovable and feel loved. These little guys deserve it. Please help us by finding people who would like to adopt one of our rescues. They need homes just as much as the next cat. I know this post is long, sorry for that. I just need to find some help and don't know where else I can turn.

Doing the best I can,
Mary

Hi, Mary! Bless you for all you're doing for these little ones. Let's move this to our SOS forum where our expert members will be so happy to assist you in your quest to save these precious babies. You may also want to check out our Caring for Strays and Ferals forum.

Tiger Ranch may be able to help. I will PM you with more information.

Hi Mary,

I'm not in Ohio, sorry. But I admire you for your willingness to help and your committment to finding help! My suggestions may be a little "different" than you were expecting, but I think they may be useful to you anyway.

You have mentioned a couple of people, individuals, who, like you, are working to do what you can for the cats you find. But all of you face challenges, because it's a heavy load to try to bear as one person, or even as a small group. The work that you are trying to do is community service. That is very important to remember. You might feel like you gain more from the experience of saving a kitten or a litter than the people you receive them from. BUT, the fact is, you are doing things that people generally expect to be done as public services.

I would suggest that you start talking to the pet and animal supply stores in your area and to the veterinarians, and if they are approachable, maybe also the local animal control people. See if you can come up with a plan for creating a small organization - or creating a program that is part of a group that already is in existence. The reason is this: you don't want to have to collect donations as an individual, and figure out how to account for those donations as an individual. But you need to raise some money from other than yourselves for the work you are doing. To do that, you should be raising money for a nonprofit organization, at least for a program or project of a nonprofit. Now, don't cringe! This is not as scary as it sounds. If you're about twenty years old, this is a wonderful thing to learn how to do, and you can help create some help that will last beyond one lifetime. You're young enough that you can expect to see some significant changes from what you do now. But you also want not to have to abandon a lot of kittens if something awful happens like one of you loses their job, or gets foreclosed on, or that sort of thing. (Nobody would wish this on you, but I just hate it when I hear about an individual who has rescued a bunch of animals and then can't help them because SHE's in need of help, herself! Forming a group and figuring out ways to raise even a small amount of money from others beyond the group, can help avoid that situation!)

People that adopt may sometimes need to find a NEW home for their pet, and it would be best if your group could offer to take the pet back in or help screen the new home. After all, you want to save animals, so you would not want them saved only for a few months and then back out on the street again -- making a lifetime promise will be a lot easier if you look at the work as a group effort to create some resource networks in your area. You can do this!!!

Best,
Linda

Well, I thought about this before. But I never really knew how to start it, and there's so many people here who DO NOT care for stray cats. The two shelters in my area are always full and one is falling apart. So I know I won't be able to get help from them. And because of the AK Steel Strike all other available resources are being given to help their pets. I'm not mad because at least those pets will still get to eat. But it does lessen my choices of getting help to just about zero. I'm still going to check and see what else I can do. I already have a few ideas about what the organization should do. Is there any other information that you could give me on exactly how it works. The non-profit thing and how to get it recognized etc. I'll take all the advice I can. First though, I'm gonna have to find some people to do this with me! And no matter what, I wouldn't be one of those people who give up an animal or the rescues I have just because something bad happened to me. They don't deserve to be punished for my shortcomings or bad things that may happen to me. As I said, at the moment I'm in Metropolitan Housing. It's for people who are basically poor or were homeless etc. So we're only allowed to have one animal per household. Which means, every time the inspection comes up, which will be in about a week...everyone starts dropping off their cats or kicking them out, abandoning kittens. Whatever they have to do so they won't get in trouble. Before my sister quit helping me we did a pretty good job of finding/taking in/and adopting out to good homes all or most of the females in our complex area. The ones who were out anyways. So the litters have stopped. But there are so many free kittens in the paper, or for a couple bucks! It just makes me so angry! So my point is, no matter what happened to myself, I would make sure they did not suffer. Please give me any more advice you can on this matter and I'd very much appreciate it!

Thanks for everything,
Mary

The woman I work with calls every listing for a free kitten and talks them into giving them all to her. Then, she has them all spayed or neutered (and I don't know where she gets her funds) and she sells them for the cost of the spay/neuter.

She does this under a non profit, but it is a lot of work to talk to people every single weekend there are ads for free kitties.

Thank God for people like you. I wish I could help you. Since I don't have money, I try to help by babysitting and adopting out kittens from my home--it's more enjoyable for me than anything so it isn't really a sacrifice. I do see how much work is involved though. Thank you SO much for what you are doing!!!!!