Kindness Ranch Animal Sanctuary: Shelter+ Challenge Grant Report

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

Adoption event supplies and equipment

We were recently approved as a Petco adoption event partner. This grant helped offset all the costs and expenses for the initial setup to purchase all of our offsite event supplies and outreach materials, including wire crates, tables, designated water and food bowls, more collars and leashes and marketing materials.

How many pets did this grant help?

Ultimately, hundreds. Our first adoption event lead to the adoption of four cats, one of whom was a special-needs kitty!

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

Stretch is a special-needs kitty who has chronic UTI issues. Our vet put Stretch on a special diet of wet food only, since we free-feed at Kindness Ranch, that presented a challenge and Stretch had to be moved out of the kitty bunkhouse and in with our animal manager. It was going to take a special person to adopt Stretch who was willing to take on the extra health-care costs and feeding specific wet food for chronic UTI.

Stretch is a gorgeous, sweet and very affectionate kitty, so of course he got lots of attention and people asking about him. We were very busy that day, so people were waiting their turn to hold the kitties, ask questions and learn about the adoption process. Of course Stretch is an attention-getter with his hamming it up, and people would immediately ask about him. Unfortunately, most, as soon as they heard of the special needs, would move on to another kitty — until the right person stopped by and fell in love with him. Jeanine, a longtime rescue mom and animal-lover, took one look at Stretch, saw how affectionate he was and immediately said she would provide him with his fur-ever home, even with his special-needs requirements! He couldn’t ask for a better person to adopt him.