Click here to view the embedded video.

Dear FixNation Friend,

Homeless cats need your help! You may be wondering why your support is so urgently needed at this time. It’s simple: You can help end the suffering.

Right now, there are more than a million homeless cats and kittens living in Los Angeles, and 40,000 cats are killed in our city and county shelters each year.

FixNation is a nonprofit organization that fixes homeless cats as part of a Trap-Neuter-Return program or “TNR” for short. TNR means cats are fixed so they cannot breed and are then returned to live out their lives on the streets. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best we can do. If we do nothing, their numbers will grow and the killing will continue.

Our mission is to end this cycle of suffering by providing free spay/neuter surgery and basic medical care for L.A.’s stray and feral cats. Our clinic is the first of its kind in the nation, operating full-time and providing free services for homeless cats. We fix more than 17,000 cats each year. It costs $1.5M annually to deliver these services to cats in need.

You’ve shown how much you care about homeless cats. You don’t like any more than we do that innocent cats die every day in L.A. shelters. So we’re reaching out to you. Your gift will help reduce the number of homeless cats in Los Angeles, and in turn save cats’ lives.

Please make a generous gift to FixNation today. Your donation, no matter the size, will help us maintain our full-time veterinary clinic to help homeless cats. Please donate today.

Thank you, we appreciate all you do for the animals.

Sincerely,

Do you have feral cats in your neighborhood that you would like to get fixed? Do you have a friendly stray cat that is hanging around who you are concerned about? Have you noticed litters of kittens springing up left and right? Or are you just simply a responsible pet owner and would like to get your cat spayed or neutered? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then we can help you.

FixNation is a non-profit organization providing free spay/neuter services for homeless stray and feral cats. We also offer low-cost spay/neuter services for tame pet cats. Our goal is to humanely reduce the number of homeless cats throughout Los Angeles by sterilizing as many as possible.

FixNation supports Trap-Neuter-Return, or TNR for short. TNR is a community-based program where concerned citizens humanely trap feral cats, have them spayed or neutered, and then return them to the exact location where they were trapped so they can be cared for and live out their natural lives. We loan out humane traps for free to the public, plus we provide training on how to properly and safely TNR. We make it as easy for you as possible to help the homeless cats in your neighborhood.

Our “Free Feral Program” for Homeless Stray & Feral Cats

FixNation offers free spay/neuter services for homeless stray and feral cats. Under our “Free Feral Program,” all homeless cats who will be eartipped for identification purposes will receive the following free services at the time of surgery:

• Spay or neuter surgery
• Physical exam
• Rabies vaccine
• Feline distemper vaccine (FVRCP)
• Revolution – to treat fleas, mange, ear mites, hookworms and roundworms
• Pain medication
• Fluids
• Antibiotic
• Droncit injection – for tapeworms, only as needed
• Limited medical treatment
• Lots of TLC!

The eartip is the universal symbol that an outdoor or free-roaming cat has been fixed. It is done while the cat is under anesthesia, is relatively painless for the cat, and does not significantly alter their beauty. We also go one step further and apply a bit of pain medication paste to the freshly tipped ear, to make it even more comfortable for the cat.

Eartip

We can do small eartips for any homeless cats or kittens who you may be trying to adopt out and our services will still be free, provided the cat or kitten is indeed homeless. Just make sure to request a small eartip when you check in if this is the case.

You do not need to live within the city of Los Angeles in order to bring cats to our clinic. We will service cats from any area, provided the cats can be safely transported to and from our facility.

Click here to get started with our “Free Feral Program” today

Tame Pet Cats

FixNation offers low-cost spay/neuter services for tame pet cats who are not being eartipped. The cost of a female/spay is $55 and a male/neuter is $40.

We also offer the following additional services for tame cats while they are here for spay/neuter surgery:

• Rabies vaccine – $8
• Distemper vaccine (FVRCP) – $8
• Revolution (flea treament and dewormer) – $20
• Microchipping – $25
• Feline Leukemia/FIV combo testing – $25 for cats not being eartipped
• Nail trims (tame cats only) – $5

Please be aware that our additional services are only provided at the time the cat is here for spay/neuter surgery. Since our main mission is to humanely reduce the number of homeless cats in Los Angeles, this is where we concentrate our time and attention. We do offer low-cost monthly vaccine and microchip clinics, in case your cat is already fixed and you are interested in vaccines or microchips only.

Click here to get started and make a tame cat appointment

Let’s face it, cats are part of our community. Both the ones who call the outdoors their home and the ones who live inside our houses. TNR starts with people just like you. When you decide to take action to help the cats within our community, or even fix your own cat, you help to build a better community for all.

Ericka has been working in news for over ten years. Born in Peru, Ericka moved to the United States at a young age. She graduated from Rider University with a communications degree. She then set off working for big industry names like Univision, Fox 5’s “Good Day New York” and WSVN in Miami and Telemundo 47 in New York. Today,  Ericka is the evening weather anchor for Telemundo 52 in LA, one of the largest Spanish television networks in the world. In 2009 Ericka earned her meteorology degree and earned the prestigious American Meteorology Society seal of approval. Her personality, versatility and knowledge have gained her respect and a huge following. Ericka’s Photo galleries and Internet segments such as “Ericka Te lo Cuenta” are amongst the most trafficked in the Telemundo website.

Ericka joined forces with FixNation because of her love of cats and strong desire to help the community at large. Sharing a common vision of “No More Homeless Cats in LA”, Ericka is using her vivacious personality and tapping in to her wide fan base to help drive home the importance of spay/neuter and to explain what Trap-Neuter-Return is all about.

“Many people in the Spanish-speaking community have a great love of animals and want to help the cats within their community, but simply don’t know about TNR or what resources are available to help them locally” says Ericka. “By letting people know about FixNation and the free spay/neuter services they offer, I can help show people how easy it is to make a positive difference in the world around them.”

Ericka visited FixNation with her camera crew and showcased the coverage and story on her heavily trafficked Telemundo website. She also invited FixNation’s Spanish-speaking team members to join her on air, with tame kitten in tow, to talk to her audience about free-roaming cats and the benefits of TNR.

“We couldn’t be more pleased that Ericka is helping us reach the Spanish-speaking community,” says Kim Senn, VP of Operations at FixNation. “Ericka is an extremely popular, influential woman with fans who follow her everywhere she goes. We are thrilled to have her help in reaching out to the Hispanic community on the importance of Trap-Neuter-Return for our community cats.”

More exciting plans are in store in throughout 2010 for Ericka and FixNation to team up on educational outreach projects for the Spanish-speaking community. Together, through education and increased awareness, they plan to turn the tide on the plight of homeless cats and to reduce the pet overpopulation in Los Angeles, helping both people and animals alike lead better lives.

To get to know Ericka Pino, go to:

http://www.Telemundo52.com/erickapino

To view her gallery of FixNation, go to:

http://www.telemundo52.com/noticias/5868721/detail.html

Best Friends Catnippers dates for 2011 (all Sundays):

• January 9
• March 13
• May 15
• July 10
• September 11
• November 13

All clinics will be held at FixNation, 7680 Clybourn Ave., L.A., 91352.

An initial application and reservations are required in advance. Please do not bring cats to the clinic without a confirmed reservation. To complete an initial Feral Cat Application, go to the “Getting Started” box on the homepage of this website, or a copy of the application is also in the lower right “Forms and Resources” section. Please specify in the application that you are interested in Catnippers reservations.

If you are one of our regular caregivers and have been to either FixNation or Catnippers before with feral cats, please email Liz Cava for reservations at liz@fixnation.org.

Our Catnippers clinics are specifically dedicated to feral cats and kittens. All cats coming to the Best Friends Catnippers clinics are required to be homeless, feral or stray and will be eartipped. Tame cats and kittens should be scheduled through FixNation during normal business hours.

Our Catnippers clinics are staffed entirely by volunteers, including volunteer licensed vets and vet techs. We are always on the lookout for new volunteers to join our team. If you are interested in volunteering for an upcoming Catnippers clinic, please email Carol Long, our Catnippers Volunteer Coordinator, at carolL@catnippers.org.

Watch an exclusive video about FixNation clinic, courtesy of our friends at Found Animals Foundation. Tour our state-of-the-art facility, meet our clients and our staff, and learn more about our mission to spay and neuter the homeless cats across Los Angeles.

Click here to view the embedded video.

FixNation wants you to know about an important development in Los Angeles concerning TNR. Last month a local judge issued a ruling in response to a lawsuit filed against the City of LA by wild bird groups, ordering that the City of Los Angeles is suspended in supporting and promoting Trap-Neuter-Return as a means to help homeless cats.

TNR is a community-based, humane approach to controlling homeless cat overpopulation. It involves concerned citizens humanely trapping feral cats, getting them spayed and neutered (at clinics like FixNation), and then returning them to their natural environment so they can live out their lives. It is the humane alternative to trapping and killing cats at our city shelters, which is inhumane, consistently does not work, not to mention very costly to taxpayers like us.

While the city isn’t stopping private citizens from doing their own TNR, this ruling will suspend the city shelters from distributing our clinic flyers to educate people about TNR or allowing shelter employees to encourage TNR as an alternative to people as they are there dropping off cats at the shelter. It also ceases any city coupon funding that our clinic can use towards homeless cats, which is critical in helping us cover the cost of spay/neuter services to make them free for you.

Without TNR and spay/neuter, the homeless cat populations in this city will explode exponentially, which means many more cats will end up being killed at our city shelters. TNR has been the “unofficial” policy for years, until just last week when this judge forced the city to suspend it. Already our city shelter euthanasia rates are through the roof due to a bad economy and home foreclosures. This will seriously exacerbate the situation.

Want to take action? Here’s what you can do to help:

1) Please take a moment to sign the petition to show your support for TNR, and please share this with your friends and neighbors so they are aware.

Sign the Petition

2) We want to hear your great stories about how TNR has helped you and your neighborhood! If you have TNR’d homeless cats and have personally witnessed the positive difference this has made in your community, please take time to send us your story.

info@fixnation.org

3) Finally, if you do live in Los Angeles, contact your city council members and city representatives. Make sure they clearly know that you do not support this ruling, you do not support the killing of more homeless cats and that you DO support TNR. Even if you don’t live in California, please voice your opinion and support us. Post to Facebook, post to Twitter, please help us to get the word out.

Directory of City Council Members

If we all speak up, this ruling can be overturned and overcome. It’s not too late, and your voice counts!

With sincere thanks,

FixNation

————————–

From our Founder and President, Mark Dodge S. Dodge, Esq.

Wild bird groups sued the City of Los Angeles in 2008 to stop its support of Trap-Neuter-Return, the humane, community based method to control feral cat overpopulation. They claimed that under the California Environmental Quality Act, the City of LA could not provide discount spay neuter coupons to feral cat caregivers or promote TNR without an Environmental Study and Impact Report, based upon the utterly false premise that if TNR is promoted by the City, fewer cats will be killed in shelters, meaning more cats left in the environment to kill birds.

Last week, after a summary trial of this action, Judge Thomas McKnew, of the LA Superior Court, bought into this spurious argument and issued an injunction preventing any City support of TNR.

Whether or not this decision is appealed and the injunction stayed, it is time for humane-minded reasonable citizens of Los Angeles to speak out against this decision and do everything possible to show the Judge and the wild bird groups that we are opposed to anything but wholehearted, enthusiastic government support of TNR in Los Angeles.

The simple fact is that TNR does not produce more cats by “returning” them after surgery, as the wild bird advocates claim, it merely transforms cats already in the environment from being the prolific breeders they are, into sterile community cats, thereby reducing their numbers over time. The consequence is clearly not adverse to the “environment.”

Without TNR, we would see more and more cats killed in shelters, while at the same time the homeless population would simply continue to expand. Moreover, the impact of cats on bird populations is miniscule as compared to habitat loss, high rise windows, airplanes, weather and other predators, contrary to the claims made by many wild bird advocacy groups in their blind opposition to TNR.

This decision, if not overcome via legal or administrative means, will not mean an end to TNR in Los Angeles, but as long as it remains in effect, it will produce a loss of City support and discount spay-neuter coupons for feral cats, outcomes which are unacceptable.

TNR brings the community together in a positive way, promotes humanity to be humane, takes the pressure off of municipal budgets and allows society as a whole to work positively toward a long term solution to the problem of pet overpopulation. It deserves to be supported by City of Los Angeles. Until that support can resume, we ask the citizens of Los Angeles to show their support for TNR.

Visit FixNation at http://www.fixnation.org for more information on how you can make a difference for homeless cats in your own community.

]]> http://fixnation.org/2009/12/judges-ruling-impacts-tnr-in-los-angeles/feed/ 0 http://fixnation.org/2009/11/feral-step-1-complete-an-application/ http://fixnation.org/2009/11/feral-step-1-complete-an-application/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:17:57 +0000 admin http://fixnation.org/?p=984 Feral cats are outdoor, free-roaming cats who are not socialized to humans. They are generally wild and unhandleable. Whether you have just one or two cats or kittens who showed up in your yard, or if you are dealing with a feral cat colony of many, you will need to complete our feral cat application form. For more clarification on the differences between feral, stray and tame cats, see the FAQ section of our website.

Feral cats will need to come to our clinic in humane cat traps, which we can loan to you under our free trap loan program. The reason we require humane cat traps is so we can anesthetize the cat through the trap. Since feral cats are not handleable, this makes it safer for both the cat as well as our vet tech.

For feral cats, both an initial application and spay/neuter reservations are required.

Click here for our Feral Cat Application

After you’ve completed the application, please email it back to us at info@fixnation.org or fax it to 818.767.7791. You can also mail it in to 7680 Clybourn Ave., LA, CA, 91352.

Once we receive your application, someone from our team will call or email you back in approximately 72 hours. We will talk to you about your specific situation, answer any questions you may have, schedule time for you to come in and pick up humane traps and get trained (if need be), and get you scheduled for spay/neuter reservations.

All applications are accepted provided that you agree to follow our clinic protocols. Our protocols are covered in the following documents, which you will need to thoroughly read and agree to follow to be eligible to come to our clinic:

• Humane Trapping Instructions
• Clinic Check-In and Pick-Up
• Pre- and Post-Surgery Care
• Safe Housing and Transporting

If you are helping a friend or family member who does not have access to the Internet, an application packet can be mailed out to them. Please call 818.524.2287 x 2 and leave the person’s name, address, phone number and that you need a feral cat application sent out. A packet will be mailed out to them.

Go to Step 2: Traps, Training and Booking Reservations

If you submitted a feral cat application and you do have traps, we will call you directly to talk you through our clinic protocol over the phone and get you scheduled for spay/neuter reservations.

If you submitted a feral cat application and you do not have traps, we will either call or email you to schedule time for you to come in to pick up humane traps from us and get trained. We will have you come either to the clinic or to one of our trap depots to pick up traps and get trained. Please plan on approximately 30 minutes for the training session from start to finish. At that time, we’ll teach you how to safely and effectively trap, we will go over our clinic guidelines with you and we will send you home with traps for you to use. We will also get you booked for initial spay/neuter reservations.

FixNation does loan out humane cat traps, cat carriers and other equipment free of charge to the public. Traps and equipment may be borrowed for up to 30 days, provided you are actively trapping and booking reservations with FixNation. All equipment must be returned promptly or upon request. We have three trap depots where you can pick up traps from:

• Sun Valley (FixNation clinic location – just west of the Burbank airport)
• Pasadena
• Palmdale

Please make sure to specify what trap depot is closest to you on your feral cat application so we can accommodate you. You’ll also need to list on your application what day is best for you to come in for training, and approximately how many traps you think you’ll want to borrow or can fit in your car.

We highly recommend that you watch our TNR training videos before you come in for training: How To Trap a Feral Cat: Video Series

Go to Step 3: Trapping that Cat!

Humane Trapping Instructions

Key highlights to remember:

• Never leave a trap out unattended overnight or for any length of time, whatsoever, for any reason.
• Do not trap cats after midnight the night before your appointment; tame strays need to be taken in off the streets before midnight. This is due to the fact that if the cat eats after midnight, they will likely vomit while undergoing anesthesia and aspirate, causing them to die or catch pneumonia.
• Feral cats need to come to the clinic in traps. Tame cats can come in hard plastic carriers or traps. No cardboard boxes, cardboard carriers or pet bags of any kind.
• Make sure the trap is locked. Brown Tru-Catch traps should be locked or zip tied at the bottom on BOTH ends.
• Line the bottom of the trap with newspaper.
• Bait the trap by putting the bait food on a square of aluminum foil, putting the foil on the ground and setting the trap down on top of it. This way when you pick the trap up, the remaining food falls through the trap and you don’t have cans or dishes inside, so the cats can’t eat after midnight.
• Make sure the trap is fully covered as soon as a cat is trapped. Keep covered at ALL times.
• As soon as a cat is trapped, pull the trap from your trapping area immediately so the other cats don’t see their friend get trapped.
• Make sure you hold the cat the night before surgery in a safe, dry, indoor, secure location that is temperature controlled.
• If you catch a cat early in the afternoon, make sure food is available to them up until midnight, using the aluminum foil trick mentioned above.
• Kittens should be fed about a teaspoon of wet food around 6:00 a.m. the morning of surgery. Kittens can become hypoglycemic if they go without food too long, which is a surgical risk.
• Do NOT trap nursing mothers until the kittens are at least 5 weeks of age. If you do happen to trap a nursing mother, do not release her. Still bring her in to the clinic. We will prioritize her for the day and you will need to release her immediately after she wakes up from anesthesia — you will not hold her overnight after surgery like you normally would. That way she can get back to her kittens quickly.
• Do not transport any cats to and from the clinic in the back of an open-bed pick up truck or an open Jeep, or in the trunk of a car unless the backseat is folded down.
• Avoid using plastic, period. Never use any trap covers made out of plastic (trash bags, plastic table cloths, etc.) because the cats often pull their trap covers in through the trap overnight and they can ingest the plastic. Only use lightweight, breathable materials for traps covers to give the cats ample ventilation.
• Be extremely cautious if you use plastic to line your car when you’re transporting cats. Again, remember, ventilation!
• Do not try and transfer a feral cat to any other container for any reason once they’re trapped, because they are very likely to escape.
• If you catch two cats in one trap, do not release one. Try to bring an extra empty trap in to the clinic with you. If you don’t have one, we’ll loan you one. Again, do not try and transfer one of the cats, because they are very likely to escape.
• We do not allow Harbor Freight traps (collapsible traps) here at the clinic as we’ve witnessed these traps frequently failing and cats escaping from them.

Good luck trapping! We’ll see you for your appointment.

Go to Step 4: Appointment Day