Southern Colorado Animal Rescue & Black Forest Animal Sanctuary: Cat Chow Building Better Lives Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

Thank you so much for the generous $1,000 grant to help us help cats awaiting their furever homes. We were able to take in a donated trailer which was in serious disrepair. We worked with a local Boy Scout troop and their Eagle Scout candidate, Michael. We were able to take a trailer (similar to a construction-site trailer) that was falling apart and refurbish it completely to turn it into our new cat habitat and adoption center. In addition, we offered free and discounted cat adoption fees and were able to place another 12 cats with special needs. We now have an insulated, refurbished, and very nice area where prospective adopters can visit our cats in a home-like, cage-free environment. We hope to add an outdoor fenced play area in the future.

We have a permanent area that we can now house additional cats and keep them more stress-free by being cage-free. We also worked with local companies for materials donations and our rescue group has become better known in our community since partnering with the Boy Scouts. By offering no-cost and low-cost adoption fees, we found homes for cats that we thought would never get adopted.

How many pets did this grant help?

Perpetual and ongoing now for years. In addition to helping cats, we adopted some other animals by people coming to visit the cats.

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Big Red (first photo) and Snickers (third photo) were senior cats who were rescued from a 100+ cat hoarding situation almost two years ago. Most of these cats had irritable bowel/sensitive stomachs and severe feline dental resorptive disease. We were having so much difficulty placing adult cats and senior cats, let alone those with issues. We were also forced to rent a portable building to house the cats. With your grant, we got rid of the rental building, refurbished what is now our new cat building and found homes for numerous cats due to not having to rely on any adoption fees. We are so thankful for the Petfinder Foundation’s Cat Chow Building Better Lives Grant!