Happy National Feral Cat Day!

It’s National Feral Cat Day! The theme this year is “TNR: From the Alley…to Main Street.” TNR stands for Trap-Neuter-Return, which, as the NFCD website states, is “a humane approach to managing and caring for feral cats— the only effective method of stabilizing feral cat colonies.”

With two rescue cats of our own, every day of the year is Feral Cat Day, but to celebrate, I’d like to celebrate by thanking everyone who helps feral cats, including trapping, spay/neutering, feeding, fostering, adopting, and more!

For more than a year my husband George has been volunteering at Fix Our Ferals, the local spay/neuter clinic in Richmond, where they just fixed their 10,000th cat! The vets, veterinary assistants, clinic manager, and volunteers at FOF are the most amazing people – they go way above and beyond to treat with great care and compassion every cat (and dog and rabbit) brought to the clinic.

And many more people work selflessly to feed feral cat colonies, and to trap them so they can be spayed and either returned to their colonies or fostered and placed in forever homes.

Our newest daughter Daisy was a feral kitten rescued from an abandoned truck by a Good Samaritan. She was bottle-fed by FOF’s clinic manager, who persisted until George finally admitted that he had fallen in love with her.

Our son Lars was also a feral cat, dumped on the doorstep of Tony LaRussa’s Animal Rescue Foundation. He almost died, but ARF performed surgery on him, and he has been the light of our lives ever since. Our initial reluctance to get another cat was due to the fact that we were worried Lars wouldn’t accept another cat – but he and Daisy finally came to an understanding.

Even if you don’t have a lot of time or extra funds, there are many others things you can do to help: donate towels, newspapers, and other things that Clinics need; spread the word about your local clinics or other groups; foster a cat until he or she can be adopted; and much more! So Happy National Feral Cat Day — and a million thank-yous to all who donate time, resources, and money to help these vulnerable animals.

You can see the original blog post by clicking here. And you can see more of my photos on my website, by clicking here.