It is with mixed emotions that we get ready to shut down our outdoor location in Morgan Hill, affectionately known as “Club Feral”. Town Cats has used this location for many years to house feral cats who were awaiting placement or otherwise needed help. Going forward, while we will absolutely continue our commitment to feral and “community” cats through a variety of programs, we will not be housing them at this location. There were too many problems with flooding this winter that make the location unsafe for us to use.
We have taken care of over a hundred cats at this location, and just during 2016 44 cats were placed in homes through the Working Cat program, most of them from Club Feral. The Working Cat program is one of the programs we will be continuing. Of the 7 cats who were still living at Club Feral in January when it flooded, 1 of them has been adopted (Kyra) 2 are doing very well at socializing (Carlos and Sammy) and we hope that they can be adopted in the future to a regular home, and the other 4 continue to do well in their enclosure and we are working hard to find placements for them (Nadius, Simba, Manxy and Ginger). All of these remaining cats are either senior cats or have medical conditions that makes it much more difficult to place them in “Working Cat” situations, which is why they are still with us. But we remain optimistic that we will find the “Right place” for each of them to call their own.
In order to prepare to turn the property back over to the landlord, we have a lot of cleanup work that needs to get done. We are calling for all of you to come down and help us on one or more of the days. Starting Friday, May 19, and running Saturday and Sunday, we will have staff and volunteers at Club Feral working on the cleanup. We will be there from 10am to 5pm on all 3 days, and you can come down, bring some friends, and either stay for just an hour or stay for several hours. We’ll provide lunch between 1-2pm each day, and will have drinks and snacks for everyone.
Some of the work will be physically taxing, but if you are not able to do heavy lifting or bending and cleaning, we still will have assignments that you can help with. Please bring your friends along, particuarly people who can help with the heavy lifting. If you are interested in helping, please click here and fill out the form. If you have questions, please contact our Volunteer Coordinator Susan Pi at susan.pi@towncats.org, to sign up. We realize plans may change and you are welcome to just drop in without signing up in advance, but by signing up in advance you can help us to plan the cleanup process better.
Here are some of the tasks that we need help with:
- Weeding/mowing the yard
- Sorting through and organizting paper files
- Sorting through and organizing supplies and other materials
- Organizing and moving supplies and equipment from Club Feral to a Storage Unit (we will have a large truck for this)
- Organizing and taking supplies/materials to a recycling center
- Organizing and dumping garbage and items to be destroyed
- Sweeping, mopping and cleaning
- Setting up our new Storage Unit (setting up shelves and organizing items)
As noted, we will be renting a large truck, but if you have a pickup truck that we can use for a few hours, please bring it along. In addition, if you have a dolly or hand cart that we can use, please bring that along as well to help with moving items. We will be hauling items over to a Storage space, as well as to the Recycling Center. Also, please bring along gloves for yourself to protect your hands, particularly if you are able to help with the yard cleanup work.
During the cleanup process, we are likely to have a number of items that we no longer need that we will be making available for free to our volunteers and to other rescues. We will post more information about this before the weekend, with a list of items and how to go about claiming anything that you are interested in.
Stay tuned throughout the next 2 months as we will have several feature articles on the cats who have passed through Club Feral, and to all of the people that have helped those cats!
