In the Beginning

This is a place no one should have to call home. This commercial/industrial area hides a refuse-strewn dump, which was "home" to many feral and abandoned domestic cats and kittens.

It is in this area we did much of our rescue in the beginning.

Winter in the dump is brutal. We had to create shelters within the dump to protect the cats from the bone-chilling cold until we could rescue them all. Most of the cats from this dump have now been rescued, but there are many more areas like this where cat colonies struggle to stay alive.

Every day we get calls from people who have found wandering cats or kittens. Some cats are abancdoned by their owners, others are allowed by their owners to roam the streets, and the rest are born on the street. Many of the abandoned and lost cats are not spayed or neutered, thus contributing to the already over-population of strays. There are too many colonies of cats who live short and difficult lives, ending in equally miserable deaths.

We would like to see all these animals come in from the cold, and ultimately find their "forever" homes.

We are all volunteers - none of us are paid. In fact, most of us are donors as well as volunteers! We all have families, work, responsibilities - for us this is not a pastime, it is a passion. We do it because doing nothing stopped being an option. We had become aware of that sad looking cat in the backyard, all skin and bones, scrounging for something to eat; we heard about the kitten that was hit by a car on our street, because it did not know any better, and it lay broken and dying for two days before someone thought to call animal service who finally had it euthanized; we glimpsed a group of tiny, orphaned kittens, vulnerable and frightened tucked away where their mom stashed them, but for one reason or another never returned to them.

We are still seeing all that, but now, we also get to see happy endings, and for us, that's a bit of sanity in a crazy world - and that's why we do it!