TNR friends make the best friends. Joann offered to help me pick out frames at the store she works at for some of my dad’s art, and also told me about their holiday coupons. My dad died in 2003 and I’ve been putting this off because I would always get too emotional. I took this as a sign to finally do this and Joann and her coworker were so patient, kind and helpful with my indecision once faced with the high selections of frames. Fittingly one of the pieces is this gold lion with a Webster’s dictionary definition written below (my dad also loved animals). I can’t wait to see the final results and hang them on my walls!

Sometimes feral cats need a little bit of recovery time BEFORE surgery.

Such was the case with Sydney. PAWS Chicago said she was a bit too sick with a URI to get spayed. They gave her a shot of Convenia, an antibiotic, and said she needed some time to get better.

Sydney was initially trapped last week by Cynthia, a woman who does a lot of TNR on the south side. Cynthia currently has a house full of foster cats, and did not have anywhere else to put Sydney. Sydney’s feeder is unable to recover cats. My friend George from Chicago TNR always tries to help Cynthia, and reached out to me.

I was happy to set Sydney up in the ingenious feral cat recovery lounge donated by Dave H. I’ve had multiple cats stay in the lounge and it has made my life, and theirs of course, a lot easier. You can connect a trap to the crate, which gives feral cats a lot more room during an extended stay.

It also gave me the chance to observe Sydney a bit more to see if she was truly feral. She is about eight months old so we wanted to see how she would act. I gave her a bed and some toys.

Sydney acted feral the entire time. She did not play, and tried to hide from me every chance. When I was cleaning the crate, she would go into the trap, and vice versa. Here’s what it looks like inside the lounge, and how she tried to stay away from me. The wood in the middle is an elevated platform with a cat bed for her to sleep on. The litter box goes underneath it. The food goes in the trap so that the cat is trained to go into the trap. At this point she was also hissing and growling. She will be going to PAWS hopefully today for her TNR surgery. Her feeder is actually pretty attached to her, so perhaps she will warm up to him some more once she is spayed and returned to him.

I dropped her back off at George’s house yesterday. George greeted me with vegan chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven. I’m always amazed at learning new things about my TNR friends. Today I learned she published a vegan cook book with her husband, David, called Veganopolis. And check out their blog! I need to order this book and try out some of the recipes.

Fingers crossed that Sydney’s surgery goes well, and she will be safely returned to her colony!

Willow N. contacted me a few weeks ago, asking if anyone I knew needed outdoor cat houses.

Willow is amazing. She is part of the CACC Cat Transfer Team, and fosters for CARF: The Critical Animal Relief Foundation.

Joann and I went to her house together to pick up the outdoor cat shelters. We got a tour inside and outside of her apartment.

She was fostering a bunch of calico kittens and cats for CARF. 

She also had a cat solarium for her window. Isn’t that cool? It attaches to your window so that the cats can sit in it outside.

She even showed us the outdoor cat litter box she made for her feral cat colony. This one was pretty fancy, made out of a deck box used for deck supplies.

This is what it looked like on the inside with all of the litter boxes.

There are two entrances so that the cats don’t feel trapped inside. They use them regularly, and Willow said the neighbor’s complaints stopped as soon as she installed them. The Arm & Hammer Baking Soda helps with any smells.

She donated three large used Rubbermaid bin shelters. I cleaned them out along with the other ones that I had and distributed most of them to the Kitchen Colony and Chicago TNR for her south side colonies.

Willow started caring for her cat colony as soon as she moved in a few years ago. The primary colony caregiver already TNR’d the cats. Over the years, the colony got smaller, and she doesn’t need as many outdoor cat houses anymore.

We were excited to see a few of those cats hanging out in her yard and alley. They stayed away from us at a safe distance.

A few weeks later Willow gave me some buttons and magnets she made with the Cats In My Yard logo. She runs this business from her home, and said she loves our logo.

I’m always so touched by people’s generosity and am glad that people are reading and responding to what we’re doing. It means a lot. Especially from people who are doing so much to help the animals as well. Thank you, Willow!