Help HCMT and Pittsburgh CAT Stay On Course

April 7, 2020 Bernadette

Homeless Cat Management Team and Pittsburgh CAT fundraiser.

As you may have read in my article The Kitten Apocalypse is Coming, Pause TNR and Prepare, regular spay/neuter surgeries are considered non-essential care and should be avoided for the sake of avoiding infection for everyone and sparing medical materials for human care. HCMT has paused all its scheduled clinics through May to comply with this decision, hoping to keep everything organized and keep everyone healthy for when we’ll be out on the streets non-stop once the stay-at-home order is lifted and we can restart clinics. Because, of course, all the kittens the spring clinics would have prevented will have been born by then, and they and their mothers will be out there getting sick, getting injured, getting pregnant again, and we’ll have to work more than twice as hard to keep up with them.

This shutdown also postponed our spaghetti dinner, the main fundraiser for the year, and the funding for a good bit of what we do in the spring and summer, the busiest time of year for TNR. We decided to set up a series of smaller themed fundraisers to take the place of a portion of what the dinner would raise. This one is the first. I’m proud to say I designed the graphic and Margo and I wrote the copy.

This is the organization I volunteer for, and who provides the support to me when I’m out trapping or rescuing cats, and also provides veterinary and medical support to the cats I foster. I couldn’t have trapped and relocated the colony where Mariposa lived if not for HCMT (and Margo), Hamlet and Bella were HCMT former feral kittens who needed a little more socialization, and Basil was a rescue from the HAR euthanasia list in 2014 through HCMT. If you’d like to donate, you can use Paypal at [email protected] or go to www.homelesscat.org to find more ways to donate. And thank you!

~~~

Homeless Cat Management Team and its adoption group, Pittsburgh CAT, need your help! Our main fundraiser of the year, the Spaghetti Dinner, has been postponed indefinitely. We know times are uncertain right now, but what we are certain of is that you can make a difference! We are asking that all of our friends, followers and supporters consider donating $5, together that will make a HUGE difference!

We are in the heat of kitten season and regular spay/neuter surgeries are not considered life-saving procedures, they must be paused to protect everyone from exposure to COVID-19, and preserve resources for critically ill animals and humans (emergency and life-saving procedures/surgeries are available, but often at a higher price). This means there will be a huge influx in the number of kittens needing help. We need to keep our organizations functioning and our staff and volunteers safe so that we are healthy and ready to go when the pandemic is over and we hit the streets to catch up with all the cats and kittens that need our help. Everyone is projecting that “normal” activities (such as the high volume spay/neuter clinics that HCMT provides) may not resume until June.

Our goal is to raise funds through the next two months so we have them on hand when we can restart regular high-volume clinics and provide urgent care/assistance for those in need in the meantime. Donations can be made via paypal to [email protected] (please select “friends and family” to avoid the fee).

Read more articles about Health and Safety.

Gifts featuring cats you know! Visit Portraits of Animals

Fine Art • Photography • Gifts • Greeting Cards • Books • Commissioned Portraits & Artwork

Great Rescues Day Book:
Portraits, Rescue Stories, Holidays and Events, Essential Feline Information, All in One Book

day book with cat portraits — Great Rescues Day Book

This information is part of what’s available in Great Rescues Day Book!

Each month features one of my commissioned portraits of a feline or felines and their rescue story along with a kitty quote on the left page, and on the right page the month name with enough lines for all possible dates, with standard holidays and animal-themed observances and events. Great Rescues also includes a mini cat-care book illustrated with my drawings including information on finding strays or orphaned kittens, adopting for the first time or caring for a geriatric cat, a list of household toxins and toxic plants, or helping stray and feral cats and beginning with TNR.

Each book includes also 10 sheets of my “22 Cats” decorative notepaper with a collage of all the portraits in black and white so you can make your own notes or write special notes to friends.

The portraits in this book, collected as a series, won both a Certificate of Excellence and a Muse Medallion in the 2011 Cat Writers’ Association Annual Communication Contest, as well as the 22 Cats Notepaper mentioned below.

Copyright

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.