Tag Archives: kittens

Friday Meow

Posted on Friday, November 4th, 2011 | Leave a comment

Hello All!

Your small Kittenaid Detroit team has been hard at work lately.

If you have recently e-mailed one of us, and we have been slow in getting back to you, or unable to help with your particular situation, we sincerely apologize. We wish we could help every single cat we hear about, but unfortunately our time, resources, and capacity, are all limited. Over the past few weeks, we seem to have gotten some good publicity, which is awesome, but the volume of people contacting us with questions (or cats that need aiding!) in the wake of that has been a bit overwhelming.

We are working on making the site more of a resource in and of itself, so that you can get the info you need without waiting for one of us to get back with you. We’re also working hard on being clear about what it is we do, and what we don’t do. To that end, we have created a FAQ page with some of the inquiries we get over and over again. Hopefully that will help. One thing we need to be really upfront about is that we currently cannot accept surrendered pets. This is not because we don’t care about them, or because we don’t understand that things come up. It is because we do not have a shelter, and we have very few fosters available, not to mention limited resources. If we start taking in surrenders, we will no longer be able to help any feral or stray cats at all.

We hope that in the future, we will be able to do more.

In good news, of 6 kittens currently up for adoption, 3 already have possible adoptions pending! In the event of multiple people looking to adopt the same cat, we will go with the first good home to complete the adoption questionnaire and interview. Spike, Malcolm and Caleb are still completely available and would LOVE to go home with YOU! Request a copy of the adoption questionnaire to get started! Please let us know who you are interested in the “comments” section of the form!

Also, we are trying to compile lists of volunteers available for specific things. If you are interested in helping out, or if you are already helping out but haven’t filled out the form yet, please take a quick minute to fill out the volunteer form. It only takes a second, and it will REALLY help us stay organized with everything.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized, Update

Tagged , , ,

A friendly kitten gets a new home, and a feral cat gets some needed aid!

Posted on Sunday, October 23rd, 2011 | Leave a comment

Friends of cats and kittens, it has only been one week since Kittenaid2011, and already there is so much going on! We are so excited about improving the lives of cats in this great city, we can hardly contain it.

Pinkie has a new home, a new forever-mom, a new cat-brother, and probably a new name too! Thanks everyone for sharing him with your friends, it was due in part to his internet popularity that he found his great new mom! His little sister, Ella, has an adoption pending, so hopefully by the end of this week, two more Detroit kitties will have happy, loving homes. If you are thinking about getting a kitten soon do not despair! We are extremely likely to have more kittens to list for adoption very very soon. We’ll keep you posted!

In addition to adoptions, we are in the midst of a TNR campaign. There is a gorgeous little family that we were hoping to trap all together, but for some reason, only the mama cat was really interested.

Linda, a local feral cat we are helping out.

Her name is Linda, and as you can see she is quite beautiful. She is named after the nice lady who took in Blanche’s mother (read about it in the Kittenaid Story), a woman who is a mother herself and in many ways an inspiration for what we are doing here.  Linda the cat has already had two babies, which we are still trying to catch. Linda is a feral cat and not interested in living with humans, so we are helping her the best we can. This week she will be spayed and vaccinated at All About Animals, and then after she makes a full recovery, she will go back to the block where she has been living, which is where she will be happiest. We are trying hard to do right by Linda, and treat her humanely and fairly. She may never understand that we have her best interests at heart, but at least she won’t have to deal with three litters of kittens per year in the future.

In addition, we have been meeting with local community members to try to figure out how we can best aid feral and stray cats in our neighborhoods. We are hoping, for example, to have a shelter building so that ferals like Linda can have some solace and peace from the cold in the winter time. However, most of us live in rental properties, and we need safe places to put the shelters. If you are someone you know has property in Detroit, and would like to have feral cat shelters, please let us know and we’ll try and work something out.

One last note: Halloween weekend is coming up, which means lots of fun, but it also means it is time to keep your cats indoors! None of us like to think about people who are cruel to animals, but the reality is that these people exist. To avoid having to think about them, please, keep your cats safe.

That’s all for now! Hope everyone has a great week!

→ Leave a comment

Posted in TNR, Update

Tagged , , , , ,

Kittens and Social Justice (or) How Will We Decide Which Issue is MOST Important?

Posted on Sunday, October 16th, 2011 | 1 Comment

Jonah poses next to a pile of Kittenaid2011 zines.

About the most common criticism we hear about our work with and for cats is “but how can you be worried about cats when there is (insert world hunger, homelessness, or any other major problem the speaker is involved with or worried about) going on?”

 

The Implication is that we are woefully out of touch. Sure, people think, it’s sad that cats die every day, but there are so many other things going on. If you are trying to make the world a better place, shouldn’t you be focused on something else?

It can be difficult to explain to people with this mode of thinking that, in fact, this is exactly the reason we do the work that we do. Their logic seems to be that, in a world with many problems and issues, you must first assess which is the most important issue, and then work on making it better. Feral cats simply don’t make the cut. Our logic is, in a world with many problems and issues, well:

a) Who is qualified to know which is most important anyways? and

b) The issues that seem to be of lesser importance will always lose out. Even if we firmly established that the most important problem in the world was world hunger, that would still be problematic. With everyone working to solve hunger, no one would say, work on improving public education.

Animals seem to be near the bottom of the list for a lot of people. Even if animals make the cut, it’s rarely feral cats.

 

About two months ago, a bunch of us had a meeting, and decided that if at all possible, we should have our event, Kittenaid2011, on National Feral Cat Day. I contacted the Trumbullplex, and they said great, sure. So we booked it, and then we booked bands, and then we started planning, and making things.

And then a thing none of us who were at that meeting anticipated happened – Occupy Wall Street, and it’s many satellite protests. On Friday, Occupy Detroit started up. There are people who are very excited about these protests, there are people who think they are ridiculous, and there are people who think they need to be done better, and we should think critically about them. There is a way that people look at me, that seems to say that it is ridiculous for me to be staying up half the night getting ready for a benefit for feral cats when this very big, and very important thing is going on.

Today is National Feral Cat Day. It’s 1:00am now. At around 7:30pm yesterday, I put out cat food and treats for the ferals on my block. Later, the kitten who I keep seeing around came around to eat. She is small and it is starting to get cold at night. She had been existing mostly on bread crumbs left out for birds. We are hoping to catch her before she is too old to socialize, and then find a good home for her. We are hoping to catch and spay her mother, so that she can live out her life without the stress of constant pregnancies.

If I go and try to make the world a better place in the way that seems most important to someone else, she will still be hungry.

 

Want to help out? You can still:

 

Thank You!

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , ,

Busy-ness Business!

Posted on Saturday, October 8th, 2011 | Leave a comment

Lately, there’s an awful lot of focus on Kittenaid2011. It’s a week from  Sunday, so that’s understandable (if you plan on attending, why not hop on over to the facebook page and RSVP?) but we certainly don’t want to give you the impression that that’s the only thing we’re working on. Far from it. It is important for us to raise funds, obviously, and we’re excited about the event, but we never want helping out cats in need to take a backseat to fundraising.

Here is just a snippet of what else is going on:

1. We have two really delightful kittens currently in a foster home that are hoping to get adopted. We’ve had a couple of inquiries about them, but at this point they are still available! They go by the names of Pinkie (m) and Ella (f). Here are some old-timey looking photos!

  Pinkie                                                                                                      Ella

We don’t have the adoption questionnaire up on the site yet, but in the meantime, you can request one, or inquire about these friendly babies by emailing Katherine at katherinedmau@gmail.com.

2. Web stuff, like making this site work, getting registered with Petfinder (we’re still working on this one!) and what have you. This is the boring stuff!

3. Working hard on trying to trap an adorable family in Midtown Detroit. It is a mother cat with two kittens, and unfortunately, the mom knows we’re up to something. We want to get them while the kittens are still young enough to socialize, before it gets really cold, and before the mom cat has more babies. When we are able to trap them, the whole family will all be spayed/neutered and vaccinated (as well as receiving any other necessary medical care) at All About Animals in Warren, Mi. The kittens will be fostered and then adopted into new happy homes, the mom will either be fostered and adopted, or re-released after she’s recovered from surgery, depending on how feral she is.

We’ll keep you posted!

4. Talking with our friends and neighbors, to try to help as many homeless cats as our time and funds will allow, and planning for future partnerships. We’re also looking into ways we can help responsible cat owners get their cat-friends spayed/neutered both inexpensively and conveniently. Look for more announcements concerning these things soon!

Oh yeah, and there’s still plenty to do before Kittenaid2011 on October 16th! Phew!

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , ,