Lone Star College-CyFair Adopt-A-Cat Month events encourage people to help homeless cats
Caturday #Caturday
This month, Lone Star College-CyFair is putting in the effort to get cat lovers into the shelters either as a volunteer, a potential foster or an adopter looking for their own pet.
Adopt-A-Cat Month programming at LSC-CyFair’s library, located at 9191 Barker Cypress Rd. in Cypress, brings a month full of events focused on saving the stray cat population, volunteer education and showcasing adoptable cats from Special Pals and Purr Paws Rescue, two area animal rescues.
Regina Vitolo, LSC-CyFair librarian, started the Adopt-A-Cat event in 2017 to raise awareness for stray cats, partnering with cat cafe El Gato in The Heights. Vitolo began filming Caturday Storytime at El Gato in 2020.
“We started filming Crafting with Kitties videos there and the goal was to feature the adoptable kitties at El Gato in our virtual programming since most people weren’t leaving their homes,” Vitolo said. “Fast-forward to everything being back open, I wanted to focus on rescues that were local and closer to Cy-Fair library. I reached out to Special Pals and they thought the idea of a partnership was great as well as filming Crafting with the Kitties videos to feature their adoptable kitties. That’s what we’ll be featuring this month, their adoptable kitties in our videos.”
LSC-CyFair’s Adopt-A-Cat Month event is back in person for the first time since 2019.
The event kicked off June 1 with Cy-Fair Comics Club, followed by a Cat Person Pawty on June 4. The full schedule of activities may be found at cflibguides.lonestar.edu/cats.
Upcoming events include a Caturday Cat Cafe on June 18 featuring adoptable cats.
Vitolo said she wants the month’s programs to inspire community members, college students and faculty to adopt, foster, and help rescues by volunteering or donating.
The goal is to make LSC-CyFair’s library a resource center for cat rescuing and fostering stray animals.
“We want to provide them with some enrichment and help them find out how they can become fosters and start volunteering and helping expose them to that experience,” Vitolo said. “All of the cat programming really is to introduce the idea of human education in general, compassion for animals and how that translates to how we treat each other as humans.”
Katy Heerssen, director of development and marketing for Special Pals, said the partnership with LSC-CyFair is a boon, with the chance to attract potential volunteers and adopt out cats and kittens. Adopters and fosters are needed with the summer presenting a high birth rate for stray cats, she said.
Special Pals cats up for adoption will be at the Cat Cafe event and in upcoming Caturday videos, Heerssen said.
Volunteers are needed as organizations like Special Pals and Purr Paws seek fosters to house pets before they can be put up for adoption. Fosters can help mother cats raise their kittens until they can survive on their own or bottle feed baby kittens without mothers.
All Special Pals requires for foster parents is a good home and a love for cats.
“For us, we provide all supplies a foster could possibly need. We have the food and equipment needed if they decide to be a bottle foster,” Heerssen said. “Experience is great, but we also provide training and a really large network of folks who can help guide them along in the adventure of fostering cats and kittens.”
Other activities for Adopt-A-Cat Month at LSC-CyFair Library include learning about TNR—trap, neuter, return—which helps reduce the cat population humanely through spaying and neutering. Vitolo is certified in TNR through Alley Cat Allies.
Vitolo hopes people will come away from the month-long celebration with not only an appreciation of cats, but the will to do more for their health and wellbeing as the number of stray cats rises daily.
“Volunteer-run rescues and shelters are beyond capacity,” Vitolo said. “They are burned out from this uptick in stray and abandoned animals. Going back to the new normal post-quarantine and seeing the adoptions drastically drop compounded with those adopted pets being abandoned is contributing to this crisis.”
To donate to Special Pals or find other ways to volunteer, visit specialpals.org. For more information about how to help Purr Paws Rescue, visit www.purrpawsrescue.org.
To see pets up for adoption, visit www.petango.com.
chevall.pryce@chron.com