Tomball SOS

Lots of things have happened in the last weeks. 

We got our 501c3 non-profit status just before Hurricane Ike hit and a load of food from the Rescuebank. 

We also got a new volunteer to feed during the week (Yea Holly!)

Ike has been hard for us (Boo Ike!)
Our power is still out, I’m at a friends house typing this update.  We’ve really leaned on the community and our friends to help us through this crisis.  HEB Grocery in Tomball donated 150 gallons of food to the cats.  Rescuebank arranged for our food and litter to be delivered from our normal supplier right after the storm.  One of our previous adopters loaned us a generator and many of our supporters have stopped by to help us clean up with the cats or bring supplies.

This is a very brief update to let folks know that we’re still out here, we’re still feeding the cats through this crisis.  When we have power, I’ll put out some more information, I have much more news to post.

A friend of our recently got some help with a behavioral issue with her dog and said the vet she worked with was great so I wanted to give them a free plug.

Lore I. Haug, DVM, MS, DACVB
South Texas Veterinary Behavior Services
2627 Cordes Dr.
Sugar Land, TX 77479
281-980-3737
281-313-1849 fax
www.texasvetbehavior.com

Tomball SOS Approved!

Well it’s been wet all day from the rain that Dolly is dumping on us.  We had the contractor come out to do some measurements of the upstairs garage.  We’ve pretty much decided that converting the upstairs garage into an insulated air conditioned space would be better then constructing another outbuilding on the property.  It will help keep our profile low in the neighborhood.  He’s going to put together a materials list and give us a quote over the next couple of days.

On another note, when we help people get their cats fixed if it turns out a cat is pregnant, we often hear the same old line about how they want to raise the babies and they’re so cute when they are tiny.  We strongly advocate getting pregnant moms fixed.  There are several reasons.

• If you really want to have the joy of raising kittens, go to the Animal Shelter.  Last time I was at Montgomery County Animal Control there were about 30 kittens in the lobby they were trying to place.  If those kittens get sick, grow old, or if they just plain run out of space, they will be killed.  Every kitten that you allow to be born into the world is another kitten in a shelter that has to die.
• They’re cute when they are small.  Small kittens get big.  Your litter of 5-7 kittens are going to turn into 5-7 big cats.  Are you going to keep them all?
• Free to a good home - This is the worst situation.  There are people out there called “Bunchers” who go around picking up the free to a good home kittens and puppies until they have enough to sell the whole bunch to a lab for animal testing.  You don’t think the researchers go out and breed their own animals for lab testing do you?  Where do you think they get them from?
• Giving the animals out to friends / family.  If you don’t get that animal fixed, you can bet whoever you give it to isn’t going to either.  This is going to result in an unaltered animal out on the streets again (Ever seen a dog or cat in heat jump a fence?) creating more litters which starts the cycle again.
• If you are going to get it fixed, you’re looking at $75 - $150 per kitten for fixing and shots.  If you have a litter of 5-7 kittens, are you prepared to spend almost a thousand dollers to take responsibility for their medical care?

We do ALOT of cat rescue.  We don’t advocate aborting pregnancies because of any religious beliefs or that we don’t like kittens.  We love kittens and cats, we wouldn’t be in this business if we didn’t.  It hurts us to see their little homeless faces peeking out from behind garbage cans or running across busy streets.  Most of the time, your litter which you haven’t given complete thought to becomes our problem to fix later down the road.  Please fix your kitty.

We picked up two litters of kittens from Montgomery County Animal Control this year.  The first one was from a feral mom that had 5 kittens and the folks at MCAC gave us a call asking if we would take them since we work with ferals all the time and basically noone else was going to give this momma a chance.  She was scheduled for euthanasia and then gave birth to the kittens the night before and they didn’t have the heart to put them all down the next day.  It struck a cord in us so we took them in.

The second litter was actually supposed to be for a fellow rescuer who trapped a bunch of nursing kittens so we asked MCAC for a nursing mother so he wouldn’t have to bottle feed the babies.  They gave us a very sweet calico mom with 4 kittens and then after we picked her up, the other rescuer told us that he found a foster home for his kittens that would bottle feed so he didn’t need the surragate mother.  We couldn’t take her back to the shelter to be put back on death row so we kept her as well.

Now the problem is that they have been in isolation cages in our garage for like 8 weeks.  They’re getting too big to stay in the cages and we can’t bring them into the house.  We have upper resperatory viruses running around like crazy in the house and it would run a high risk of killing the kittens with FIP if they came into the house.  Small kittens and older cats are very vulnerable to corona virus.

We’re looking at the possiblity of buying a medium size (16 x 20) outbuilding to put up in the yard to make space for them or maybe finishing off the upstairs garage and converting it into an apt / cat area.  We need to put a regular roof on it because the metal roof leaks and then insulate, dry wall, and replace the central AC condenser that broke last year. (We tried cooling the upstairs and without insulation it was hopeless).

We’re getting closer to having the 501c3 completed and I should go get us a bank account for donations soon but we’re afraid we need to have the space completed long before our non-profit status is approved.  At this point we’re looking at digging into our personal 401k money and just taking the IRS penalty.

After performing a necropsy on the kittens, a pellet gun or BB gun is suspected at this time.  Again, any information that leads to a prosecution will be financially rewarded.

You might have noticed that we have a Twitter box on the home page. I’ve recently read some articles about getting your non-profit organization involved in social media so I’m working on getting us up to speed.  I can’t say that I understand the direct benefit yet but I’m willing to give it a whirl.  The next step is to get us a Myspace or Facebook page.  Sign up for our Twitter updates or RSS feeds from the blog and you can test it with us.

We were alerted last night by the Tomball PD that there were two dead kittens near one of our feeding spots.  We’ve recovered the bodies and will be doing an examination shortly.  There is some initial suspect of foul play involved.

If anyone has information leading to the prosecution of persons responsible for the deaths of these 2 kittens, please contact us and you will be financially rewarded.  I’ll follow up with a new post when we have more information.

Trap, Neuter, Return (TNR)

TNR is one of the primary reasons we come together as a group.  Feral colonies are good for the houses and businesses they are near.  They eliminate mice, rats, roaches, snakes, and other nuisance pests.  There are a number of studies that show if you remove a feral colony from a food source, other new cats will come in to fill the void.  The only way to reduce a feral cat population at a food source is through stopping the reproduction cycle.  The existing cats will keep out most new cats.

We often have to repeat to business owners that we didn’t bring the cats here, the cats find the food source on their own.  We just stumble upon the colony so we set up a TNR and maintaince program for the existing colony.

We have been performing our TNR through funding of the Feral Cat Assistance Program (FCAP) which coordinates a monthly trapping through the west side Saving Animals clinic.  This has been trouble for us on some months because they are so far away it can make coordination difficult.  Recently we were informed that if we can make arrangements with a local vet in Tomball, there might be some corporate grants available to us to pay for local TNR.  I’ll let you know once we make an agreement with some local vets.

Howdy Everyone,

I’m working on doing some redesign on the website and that includes switching from Blogger to Wordpress for the blog.

I’m also going to move the issue about Tomball College to a backpage instead of having it on the main page.  Basically we still feed there, Tomball College has stopped trapping and have no interest in supporting an on-campus TNR program and they refuse to talk to us further about it.  If we see traps come back you can bet we’ll raise the issue to the community again.  Thanks everyone for your support on this issue.

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated the blog. We got so frustrated trying to work with Tomball College that I had gotten disgusted with them. Basically we’ve put on hold any plans to try and work with the management of Tomball College but we are still feeding the remaining cats out there and we keep an eye out for any trapping if they start up again.

On another note I’m pleased to report that we trapped, vaccinated, de-wormed, and fixed nine more cats this month from the Tomball area and most of them were pregnant mothers. With the unusually warm winter this year it seems that the kitten season may be starting earlier then usual.

We have also submitted the paperwork to officially become a 501c3 organization (Thank you Heidi!) so look forward to that announcement soon.