Spring 2015

When you are so busy like we are you don't get everything done!  One thing we haven't been able to accomplish is to keep this web page current and full of interesting information.  Our last entry was eight months ago, and we hope you might understand this failing with some sympathy.  This entry will let you know a bit more about our current efforts.  We do have a great Facebook page kept active by a volunteer, Nanci Sackett, and you are encouraged to follow that information stream which has been lively and full of interest.

We have found that Stillwater Cat Haven is fairly unique in its concentration on community cat colonies, cats without human ownership.  Most rescue groups in our area obtain their pets from animal control agencies and persons who have tamed pets needing new homes, and this has only minor effect on the uncontrolled cat populations.  Some community cats are feral and antagonistic to contact with people.  Others have been abandoned, were comfortable at one time with human touch and could become adoptable with a minimum amount of renewed contact.

Most recently we have been trapping and neutering colonies in trailer parks, an apartment complex, and open lands surrounding an office building where the colony numbers have exploded beyond an acceptable level.  Our effort at the apartment complex has reached 15 cats with a couple more we would like to catch.  At the trailer parks there is a typical situation of cats living under the trailers with unsecure skirting, feasting on dinner scraps from the occupants on their porches, but in a situation where no one has taken any responsibility for population control.  Fortunately we have been able to find alternate living sites for ferals, in dairy barns around Fortuna, and at an organic farm where the owner is losing his profits to gophers and ground squirrels and wants to maintain an organic control with some cats.  Adoptable cats have been placed online and we have been at Petco on Sundays with some success.

This is also the time of year for kittens.  We have trapped many pregnant mothers and they were spayed before giving birth.  This might seem to be a disturbing situation for some, but each of these females does not contribute another 4-6 kittens to the population who could then start reproducing their own babies in 5-6 months.  We have found a sanctuary home for most of these spayed mothers.  The number of community cats is beyond acceptable levels and our efforts such as this have provided a positive impact in the locations where we have been working.

We do have two mothers at our facility who had given birth before they could be spayed, one has a single surviving kitten, the other with five.  Of the five kittens, two are very healthy, but the other three have lost weight, are weak and with eye drainage.  The mother was just tested and was positive for leukemia.  The kittens may contract this disease and the procedure is to test the kittens at 4 months of age and hope for a good result.  They are all cute kittens and we hope we can get them all healthy and adoptable.

And so we continue on at Stillwater Cat Haven.  There are the continued requests for assistance at overpopulated locations, so many that we cannot possibly handle the situation alone.  The public agencies have little desire to become involved with control of community colonies, the problem exceeds their own capacities and willingness.

Financially we suffer.  We have exhausted our inheritance from parents and are now spending our IRA resources to keep us going.  We need financial assistance; we need a fundraising ability although our expertise is elsewhere, so we would like to find a dynamic fund raiser to help us continue.  We can receive donations through Pay Pal on this website and we have just established a post office box which can receive direct mailed contributions.  We are planning some raffle items which will use the post office box for entering by participants.

Enough for now, thank you for reading our brief commentary and its insight to our current activities.  We would appreciate any of your thoughts and encouragements and enthusiasm to us as we continue in this effort.

Joan and Don Neptune
Stillwater Cat Haven
P.O. Box 278
Anderson CA 96007
(530)365-4861