Weekly update, August 24th
It's a special moment when a hissy, spitty cat decides you're OK and starts nuzzling!
Family cats. The good news is we’ve now found eight cats with existing microchips. Not so good is that the families didn’t keep the registration current, so we don’t know where they live now. One of the cats turns out to have lived in Reno. How did she come to be down here? We will be continuing every effort to find those families.
“More and more of the cats are showing us that they were family pets,” says Sherry Woodard, Best Friends animal behavior expert . “We are urgently asking that anyone who is missing their cat from the greater Vegas area, please come out to our rescue operation in Pahrump. The kitties may be here, and they want to go home.”
Some of the lucky kitties will be going on smaller adoption events and this will serve as a nice warm-up for the bigger adoption events coming down the pike in Las Vegas and Pahrump. The kitties going to Vegas this weekend include Relavay. The sweetest cat in the world. Her coat had fallen out, probably from poor diet, but it is coming back in, so she looks a little rough right now.
After the roundup. Following last week’s roundup of cats who were hiding out on the outer edges of the property and outside the fence, these cats are still slowing settling in – slower than what the staff was hoping for.
One of these is No Toes. “It looks like the toes on one foot were caught in a trap or otherwise cut off,” says Sherry, “He used to come visit with us when we went to feed on the perimeter. But he’s a little spooky now that we’ve brought him in.
“We are seeing kitties pacing the new fencing around the courtyard and yowling,” she adds. “Many of them seem to be afraid to go into the buildings. That worries us, we wonder why they are afraid of the buildings.”
“We are seeing kitties pacing the new fencing around the courtyard and yowling,” says Sherry. “Many of them seem to be afraid to go into the buildings. That worries us, we wonder why they are afraid of the buildings.”
So, one of the items high on the wish list is Feliway spray and Feliway diffusers Feliway is used to put inside the buildings to help the kitties calm down. The spray can be put on bedding both inside the building as well as in the feral cat trailer and in the open-air kitty cabanas in the courtyard.
More items for the wish listAs well as Feliway, we’re also looking for:
* Used scrubs.
* More AVID scanners
* A Spectra camera. This is a newer kind of Polaroid and it takes better closeups than what we are using now. And we need lots and lots of film. We’ve admitted more than 500 cats, but still have more to go.
Donations have seriously dwindled as the rescue has been less in the eye of the local media. And while we had more volunteers this week, there is still an urgent need for more help. Volunteers and donations are the lifeblood of the rescue.
The magic! The best thing of all for the staff here is when we see a supposed “feral” cat melting right before our eyes.
“We had an orange cat in the assessment room,” says Sherry. He was hissing and spitting and hunkered down in one of the travel bags! He glared at us while we were working with some other cats in front of him. Cats don’t like being poked and prodded, so sometimes it looks like wrestling. But then, suddenly, after a couple of days, all of sudden, this orange cat came out of the travel bag, sauntered over and touched his nose to my face, soliciting love, as if to say, ‘OK, I’m ready now.”
By Barbara Williamson, photo of McKenzie with Creed the cat by Troy Snow. ---------------------------
HOW YOU CAN HELPDONATIONSDonations are deeply appreciated, since costs are rising by the hour. You can donate to the
Best Friends Emergency Rescue Fund.
VOLUNTEERNo previous cat handling experience is needed but you do need to be able to work outside in extreme heat doing physical labor and lifting. If you have availability to volunteer, please contact Ellen Gilmore at
elleng@bestfriends.org or 805-698-5959.
CAN YOUR ORGANIZATION HELP THESE CATS?Best Friends is looking for organizations that can offer permanent placement. If your organization would like to help please email
nmhp@bestfriends.org or call 435-644-3965 ext 4254.
Directions from Las Vegas to the FLOCK property in Pahrump: Take Blue Diamond Highway (Highway 160) to Pahrump, turn left on Homestead (directly across from the Shell gas station), turn right on Silver, right again on Vicki Ann, and then right on Bond. The address is 2171 Bond. Look for the “Welcome Volunteers” sign with the Best Friends logo.
Las Vegas drop-off location for donations of food and other cat supplies: Intermountain Farmers Association Country Store, 3176 W. Martin Ave. on the corner of Martin Avenue and Dean Martin Boulevard