How Can You Help?

Caring for community cats

Feeding and caring for community cats is a fun and rewarding job. No matter the weather, the colony is fed twice a day with a mixture of wet and dry food and fresh water. Some of the cats are discarded pets, while others were born on the streets and have grown to trust the neighbors to care for them so it’s important to handle the cats with care, socializing the friendly ones and giving space to the skittish ones. Feeding them allows the cats to stay nourished and keeps them from eating rotten or possibly poisoned food as well as teaches them to stay close by.

Food, water, medicine and housing

The colony receives half of a 5.5 oz. can of wet food mixed with a scoop dry food each meal twice a day. Their water bowl is cleaned every week and they are given fresh water each morning.

While the colony is very healthy, it isn’t just food and water they need. Sometimes they get into scuffles with other cats or wildlife and get injuries that can get infected. Sometimes they get fleas and require medicine.

During the winter months, community cats will find warm places to stay, however some areas are dangerous, like crawling into car engines, or even into random homes, so it’s important to offer safe housing. Below are the images that show the evolution of cat houses over the past 3 years.

The start of cat house making started pretty simple with a cardboard box and a towel. As it progressed, I started using discarded plastic bins and recycled Styrofoam coolers with straw. The latest in the evolution of cat houses are actual cat houses with heated blankets.

The request for help

I’ve been caring for the colony for over 2 years and while I love every moment of it, there is quite a number of costs that go into it, with food being at the top of the list. Recently, one of my cats, Franklin, has been spotted with serious inflammation to his head which is likely a sign of fleas, so my goal moving forward is to apply Frontline Plus to each cat each month. This can get very expensive very quickly.

I’ve added a donation button to this page for those who want to make donations as well as my Venmo for those who want to donate directly. As I do more research I would like to find a way to have donations come in the form of Chewy or Amazon deliveries but not sure how to do this (yet!).

As I hate obfuscating where the money goes, below is a list of all costs that money would go to. As I only need a finite amount of money to feed and house the cats, any overage would be donated to other cat feeders in nearby neighborhoods.

The costs:

Frontline Plus for Cats - $37 for 3 cats per month.

Friskies Pate Seafood & Chicken Variety Pack (40 cans) - $20.48 per month and a half.

Kirkland Signature Chicken and Rice Cat Food 25 lbs. - $29.99 per month and a half.

Heating blanket - $26.99 per.

Plastic Tote - $25 per. Can hold 2 Styrofoam coolers.

Styrofoam Cooler - $10.00. Goes into a plastic tote and houses one cat.

Venmo information: @Ramon-Sola