Mission

FixNation’s mission is to reduce the population of homeless cats by sterilizing as many as possible while demonstrating the effectiveness of Trap-Neuter-Return and colony management for the humane care of homeless cats.

Vision

FixNation envisions a a day when every cat has a home.  Until no cat is homeless, we see a time when Trap-Neuter-Return will become the officially sanctioned and government-funded approach to homeless cat management.

History

TNR programs have been established in many cities and towns all across America in recent years. In Los Angeles, the husband and wife team of Mark Dodge and Karn Myers approached Best Friends Animal Society about creating a program dedicated to spay/neuter for homeless cats.  The program, named “Catnippers” began in 1999 and continues as a bi-monthly, all-volunteer clinic, which now operates out of FixNation. Staffed purely by volunteers including volunteer vets and vet techs, Catnippers has been responsible for fixing over 14,000 homeless cats since 2000.

With the success of Catnippers, Mark and Karn saw that a permanent, full-time facility, would help many more cats throughout Los Angeles, making an even greater difference in our community and in the lives of these homeless animals. So in 2006, they secured grant funding and individual contributions sufficient to launch the very first free, full-time spay-neuter facility within Los Angeles — FixNation, Inc.

FixNation received 501(c)3 nonprofit status in January 2007 and officially opened its clinic doors to the public on July 16, 2007. FixNation is the first organization of its kind  dedicated to providing, full-time free spay/neuter for homeless cats, serving feral cat caregivers and implementing TNR nationwide.

Our Founders

FixNation was founded by the husband and wife team of Mark Dodge and Karn Myers in 2007.

Mark developed a love of cats when just a child. When he first met Karn, she was also an animal person but having grown up in the country, Karn thought of cats mainly as mousers and barnyard inhabitants. However, once Mark introduced her to the charm of felines, she quickly grew to love them as pets.

As life progressed, Mark and Karn found that virtually every art piece they acquired was in an animal theme, that the charities they most heavily supported were animal or wildlife oriented and that animal issues were very important to them. This progression eventually led them to Best Friends Animal Society, and in 1995 they began contributing to and volunteering for various Best Friends programs in Los Angeles.

In 1998, Karn was working for a special effects company in the movie business. Every morning and every afternoon, she noticed two women doing something at the adjacent property, which turned out to be feeding a colony of feral cats. Karn quickly befriended the two caregivers, and thus began a year-long education on the vast world of homeless stray and feral cats. Karn started investigating what could be done for these homeless cats, and through the head of the Best Friends Brigade L.A., she started developing momentum to actually “do something” about the homeless cat situation in Los Angeles. Mark, a corporate attorney, also joined the effort by researching and networking with other individuals of a similar interest.

Their networking and investigation led them to the Feral Cat Coalition in San Diego. They had discovered that their dear friend Kimberly, executive secretary by day and kitty rescuer by night, and her vet friend Dr. Bill Davies were going down to San Diego once a month to volunteer at FCC clinics. Karn and Mark had the idea of duplicating FCC’s program in L.A. They went to two clinics and videotaped FCC for reference purposes. They then put together an organizational plan and made a formal proposal to the outreach program directors for Best Friends. After review and a good deal of dialogue, Best Friends adopted them and provided the initial funding to get the program going. Thus was born Best Friends Catnippers, with the first Catnippers clinic held in October 1999.

After ten years of successful Catnippers clinics, Karn and Mark knew that with more funding and a permanent facility, they could potentially make a much larger dent in addressing the homeless cat population in LA. Thus in 2007, after much planing and fundraising, Mark and Karn launched FixNation, Inc. – a full-time TNR clinic under a new 501(c)(3) organization.

Over the years, Mark and Karn have shared their lives with many beloved kitties, including Seymore, Omar, Maxine, Bentley, Fonzie, Happy, Salsa and Kenya, and their current crew of Wolfgang, Shona, Shadow, Magic, Indie, Simon, Mandy, Dulce and Angel. Nearly all of them started their lives as feral kittens.