Our Year End 2013

Our Year End 2013:  For Stillwater Cat Haven it has been another busy year of following the procedures of Trap, Neuter, and Return in the development of stable cat colonies.  This year again we have been capturing many kittens of feral moms with hopes that we can tame them and find forever homes with family adoptions.  This year has included help to occupants of several different trailer parks where uncontrolled populations of cats were the norm.  Most who have asked for help with their cat overpopulation have limited financial resources and we have committed our own resources to resolve their problems.  We also helped one man who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and is leaving his home to be with his daughter; he had been caring for an uncontrolled population of cats and we captured 20 cats in three evenings and he paid for their neutering.

In order to improve our adoption abilities we have given greater attention to our Facebook page, with photos and information about our adoptable kittens. We became a partner with Petco where we have had Sunday adoption days; we received donations of cages for our in-store displays from the Petco Foundation.  Our adoptable animals are displayed on several other internet sites as well.  We have had a great variety of types and colors of cats and we encourage any with adoption interest to pursue these sites and/or contact us for a visit to our facilities and review possibilities in person.

For several years now we have utilized paid part-time employees.  They have been working enough hours that we felt it important to acknowledge their value with a wage supplement to their income.  Our current employees include a working wife whose husband is recovering from a logging industry accident and is currently unable to work himself, three  part-time college students where our pay helps them to attend school, and a single mom who can supplement her public financial support with a job here.

We have added additional staffing to our efforts recently, with help from two members of Pets without Partners, Tawny and Jesse, who have been very successful with dog adoptions and are now offering some of our cats as well.  We have a new Volunteer, Amy, who has added an enthusiastic spirit to our work.  And Tabitha with her mentor have been volunteering with our morning shifts twice a week where they have developed excellent capabilities and we are now considering them to be employees under the auspices of a local public service agency.

Important to the concept of Trap, Neuter, and Return Stillwater Cat Haven continues to monitor the community colonies where we have neutered and stabilized the colony size.  Every evening we provide food and visit with those animals to insure they remain healthy and free of new unneutered members.

Our facilities continue to be better organized and improved.  The Cat Room of our home addition is an initial holding room for newly obtained animals and can be used as a sick bay isolation ward.  Our solid garage door has been replaced with a glazed window unit which provides great natural lighting to this protected living area for some of our cats.  We are building a better weatherized enclosure/shed connected to our chain-link pens in the rear yard area.  We have had some very cold weather this winter and our heat lamps distribution in our pens has been well received by those occupants.  Snow has fallen once this winter so far and created a new experience for most of our sanctuary animals.

We do need financial support from others.  We are spending more than we receive and the family resources which have allowed us to exist will be exhausted in the not too distant future without more help.  We hope those who have learned of our efforts and our success in establishing stable feral community colonies will began and continue to provide us this support we must receive in order to survive and continue our efforts.

Very truly yours,

Joan and Don Neptune, founders of Stillwater Cat Haven