Always ready for a challenge and to lend helping hands, Brigadiers set out early Sunday of the holiday weekend for our second Kitty Scrub-A-Thon!

By Andrea Lewis, Best Friends Brigade Coordinator

When Los Angeles’ largest rescue group for cats contacted the Best Friends LA Brigade with a project, we rose to the occasion and assembled a group of our hard-working volunteers.

Kitten Rescue, founded in 1997, has rescued and placed more than 5,500 stray and 11th-hour shelter cats into loving forever homes. Their impressive facility is a well-organized kitty haven. Large, open areas furnished with cat beds, tunnels, scratching posts, shelves, cubbies and rafters (a favorite hangout of the felines) provide comfortable residence for one hundred plus cats while they wait for their lucky adoption day. Other areas are dedicated to ferals and cats with various heath issues and chronic ailments – most of which will live out all nine lives being cared for at the Kitten Rescue sanctuary. In all enclosed areas, cats play, snuggle, watch curiously and wander...you cannot turn a corner or peer into any room without seeing a furry creature. With the size of the facility and the number of cats, things can get, well, hairy. It was time for a major scrub-down. Enter the Brigade.

Armed with scrapers, sponges, mops and brooms we washed and sanitized cages, walls, floors and windows. Top to bottom, inside and out, our volunteers climbed and crawled their way through the facility to get every inch as clean as possible. When done with the inside areas, we were able to assist in cleaning and organizing dozens of carriers. A midday pizza break, courtesy of the kind folks at Kitten Rescue, and we carried on cleaning and vacuuming accumulated hair from wire enclosures. I did say every inch – and the Brigaders worked tirelessly to get it done.

The timing of the Scrub-a-thon was well-planned, falling a week prior to Kitten Rescue’s Open House where the general public can come visit and view the amazing efforts of this rescue group first hand.

And by the way, they are not species-biased - Kitten Rescue rescues the odd dog in need, too!

Kitten Rescue relies on volunteers, fosters and of course, donations. To learn more about the organization and to see the beautiful animals up for adoption, please visit Kitten Rescue's website at www.kittenrescue.org.

Photos by Andrea Lewis

Posted by Laura Thompson, Best Friends Volunteer