Have you ever thought about the power you, as an individual, possess? As one person, you have the power to change your life and to affect change in the lives around you. You have the power to help anyone and anything you choose. You have the power to help that stray cat you saw this morning. That’s power.

We invite you to use it, and use it wisely.

When you harness the power of 1, you can help many. At FixNation, we believe in the power of one. It’s why we’re launching our It starts with 1 campaign.  Join us.

Click here to give just $1 to help 1 cat. Share this with a friend and have them give just $1 and ask them to also share.

Before you know it, we’ll reach one hundred, one thousand, maybe even one million.

Mark your calendar to get your grub on with FixNation at the Veggie Grill on Thursday, May 17th from 5pm-11pm!

If you’re already a VG fan, then you know how delicious this evening will be.  If you’re a Veggie Grill virgin, prepare to fall in love!  Tell your friends, carpool, run, don’t walk!  We’ll see you there.

50% of all proceeds from sales will go directly to helping feral cats.

On Saturday, April 7th, FixNation had the opportunity to join the annual Blessing of the Animals ceremony at Olvera Street / La Placita in Downtown Los Angeles.

The ceremony is held annually, typically on Easter Sunday but also the Saturday prior, and has been a tradition since 1930.  On this beautiful and sunny Saturday, over 2000 people crowded the streets surrounding the Church and Plaza at Olvera Street to celebrate their animals and get them blessed by Cardinal Roger Mahony. This blessing, some believe, will bring their animal’s good health throughout the year.

Prior to the Blessing Ceremony, a procession traveled down Los Angeles Street and around Olvera Plaza, lead by a cow, decorated in flowers. It is said that this cow leads the procession because it is she that brings most to humanity.  A bazaar of animals followed her, including various farm animals, snakes, lizards, birds, dogs, cats and even insects!  (Be sure to check out event photos, below.)

In the main plaza area, FixNation had an outreach table alongside other local animal welfare organizations. We spent the day talking with festival goers about our mission and the importance of spay and neuter and TNR. It was a fun day had by all!

Join FixNation in spreading the word at fun, community events like the Blessing of the Animals.  Email volunteer@fixnation.org to get started!

Recently, video of a hungry black bear nosing around in the suburban La Crescenta foothills made international news, as the bear turned a corner and startled a man texting his boss about the helicopters, police cars and general commotion outside his home. With three tranquilizer darts, the bear was subdued and released deep in the Angeles National Forest, but his excursion to La Crescenta underscores the fact that the neighborhood plays hosts to coyotes and other wildlife.

La Crescenta resident Rob Feldman knows this better than anyone. When his strictly indoor feline Miso accidentally got outside last April, the traumatized cat wouldn’t come back to its home. “She didn’t know to stay by the house, and took off. We spent a lot of time looking for her, and we thought that she’d been eaten, that she had died. We alerted the neighbors, we tried everything we could. And then a month or so later, there were sightings of her in the neighborhood.” Feldman’s three sons “were devastated.”

The family’s cat fancy had begun with a friend’s Tokinese (a stately crossbreed between a Siamese and a Burmese). “We just fell in love with it, and we bought a purebred just like it, and named him Shabu. He was our first cat,” he says. Feldman operates a video service for the law profession. “We realized that we were on the road quite a bit and Shabu needed a friend at home, so we got Miso.”

We all know that cats are wily beasts. One in three household pets in the US will get lost at least once in their lifetime; without the proper identification—microchips and ID tags—90% of lost pets never return home. Miso was microchipped, but, Feldman says, “Eventually we just decided that she wasn’t going to come back to us, and we actually got another cat we named Saki, who got along great with Shabu.”

Miso reunited

Miso welcomed home by Shabu

It’s National Pet ID Week, and Miso’s amazing journey home is purr-oof of the importance of microchipping our furry friends. No more painful to administer than a vaccination, a microchip is an affordable way to help ensure that if your cat or dog goes missing, it (and you) can be identified. Microchips are even better insurance than ID tags because they can’t fall off–in tandem, they provide pet owners with the most piece of mind.

Get your cat (or dog) microchipped at one of FixNation’s upcoming “low-cost vaccination” clinics.  Check the events calendar for dates and details.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Doug had done his research and found FixNation, where he learned about our life-based program for stray and homeless cats, which provides free spay/neuter, vaccinations, flea treatment, and eartipping.  Doug attended one of FixNation’s free Humane Trap Training Sessions in April 2011, where he received all the tricks of the trade for humanely and safely trapping the cats.  Once properly trained, Doug was supplied with 10 humane cat traps as part of FixNation’s Free Trap Loan Program.  Working with FixNation gave him everything he needed to start the process of systematically trapping the cats at each colony location at the racetrack.

Doug knew where the main colonies of cats were, just by being at the racetrack and observing the cats.  But as he started his TNR mission, he started being contacted by other concerned racetrack employees, asking if he could also help them with the cats they were seeing at their particular areas.  Doug wasn’t the only person who had noticed the cats.

Jockey Eswan Flores came to know the racetrack cats while riding quarter horses at the Los Alamitos Race Course.   “My friends began to notice a lot of kittens in the stables,” Eswan stated.   “And the more we looked, the more cat families we discovered.”

Although it seemed a daunting task at first, Doug trapped 32 feral cats from the racetrack himself — and many more were brought to FixNation by Deborah Trout, and others who stepped in to help Doug trap and transport the cats to FixNation.

Doug is simply a motivated gentleman who not only identified the feral overpopulation challenge at the racetrack, but choose to find a humane solution, a life-based solution, rather than the only other alternative, which is trap and kill.

Doug’s compassion for the cats of Los Alamitos was embraced by the other racetrack employees, who also care for the cats.  Doug’s efforts have made it possible for the cats to continue to coexist with the racetrack horses, companions in the stables to their larger sized friends.

FixNation is thrilled to be a part of this premiere episode where we spay the former feral, Larry.  Yes, we spayed Larry, who is a girl!

Check out this clip below, to get a taste of this kitty’s troubles, but watch the show to get the full story.

The chill of Los Angeles winter nights was setting in. The night before, a Momma cat and her two kittens jumped down from a wall separating the site from an apartment complex. Hungry, all three cats walked into the humane traps that Kristine, the trapper, had baited with food.  Kristine left with the three cats she caught, planning to come back the next night to try again; her experience taught her there had to be more cats living at the site.

This evening Kristine had returned, set, and baited a drop trap. She sat in her van to wait from a distance. Then, carefully and deliberately, moving their way gracefully around and through debris left by workers, cats of all colors emerged, this time from under the apartment fence, drawn by the aroma of an unexpected meal coming from the propped up trap, an object they had never seen before.  The odd gait of a black cat caught Kristine’s attention. His forward movement was unsteady.  As the cat awkwardly maneuvered toward the trap, he shifted his weight away from his left side, favoring his right front leg. Once at the trap, he sat, wearily taking advantage of the available light to assess the object in front of him and the food inside it.  With some effort, he pushed himself up and entered the trap.

Inside the trap, the other cats left as soon as the black cat went to the food.  Kristine quietly approached the trap and saw that there was no hair on the cat’s left leg. The leg appeared to be seriously injured. She decided to focus her efforts that night on trapping this little black cat. She watched him. He took a few bites from the food bowl and turned away. As he left the trap, the other cats returned, but rejected him again when he tried to join them. He was alone.  As trappers know, it’s not unusual for another cat to get in the way of one’s master plan. And tonight was no exception.

A calico cat wended its way around the trap, a trusting cat, a cat that had no idea about drop traps. It stopped before entering the trap all the way; neither in nor out of the trap.  Insuring that Kristine couldn’t pull the release rope, this new kitty sat there, at the abyss, looking around, probably thinking. Then it got up, went over to the food, scooped up a bite and exited the trap to chew in peace, elsewhere. The injured cat stayed put. There was a moment of quiet.  It was now or never. Kristine yanked the rope. With a resounding crack, the plastic prop flew up sharply against the rebar weights of the trap, then high into the air, with  the rope snaking after it. The trap dropped to the ground fast and heavy.  All the cats tore into the darkness, leaving the injured black cat behind, inside a place it had never seen before.

After Kristine transferred the black cat to a smaller trap, she lifted the cover to take in the extent of his injury. He had no fur up to his shoulder. His claws were blackened and disfigured as if there were no circulation reaching his paw. She saw one spot on his leg where there was a hole; it was bleeding. As Kristine lowered the trap cover, the little black cat lay down calmly, protecting his injured leg with his body.

Early the next morning, as powerful winds swooped and whirled throughout the Los Angeles basin, Kristine transported the trapped, injured cat to FixNation, where one of the vets on duty, Dr. Snook, examined his paw and leg. The cat no longer had skin on his leg. Dr. Snook saw that the injury had torn the nerves at the upper joint of his left leg, causing the limb to lose function and sensation. Without function and sensation, the black cat began self-mutilating to remove his dead leg.

The choices were either to amputate the leg or humanely euthanize the injured cat.  Dr. Snook prepared for surgery.

The surgery to remove the black cat’s injured leg lasted thirty minutes. Some of his nerves had stretched out and had become infected. In addition to nerve damage, he suffered from anemia brought on by a severe flea infestation. Finally, the operation over, Jeana, the Head Vet Tech at FixNation, placed the black cat in a kennel, where she could observe him, and he could recover safely.

When Kristine learned from Dr. Snook that the injured cat would survive, she looked for a name to give him that suited his brave journey, not only through the hostel world homeless cats navigate, but also the experience of removing his own limb, which could no longer support him.  Finally, she settled on ‘Yuki’, which means courage in Japanese.

Inside the kennel, Yuki slowly emerged from the anesthesia. When cats regain consciousness after surgery, they struggle unsuccessfully to right themselves, but their balance is off. They often hallucinate.  And it was the same for Yuki. But in his case, his attempts to stand were complicated by the absence of his left front leg. However, because of the state of his leg, prior to surgery, Yuki already knew how to function with three good legs.  His prognosis was good; provided he didn’t return to the industrial site.

Animals who lose limbs don’t view themselves as amputees. They don’t experience stigma. They feel better when the bad limb is removed. But if Yuki went back to the industrial site, his survival would be compromised because larger animals would perceive his three limbs as weakness, and he could become the target of their predation. If Yuki were to thrive, he would have to be placed in a foster home until he fully recovered, then he could be relocated to a sanctuary. That was the plan. Best Friends Animal Society placed Yuki on the sanctuary waiting list.

In the meantime, there was no foster home available for Yuki. Kristine brought Yuki back to the holding location where the TNR cats stay the nights before and after spay and neuter surgery.  She set up an enclosure for him so he could start moving around, but he wouldn’t get up. Kristine sensed Yuki was becoming depressed. She attempted to sooth him, but whenever she carefully drew near, Yuki pulled back, issuing a deep guttural roll, warning her to stay away.

Continuing to care for him, Kristine transferred Yuki to an expanded pen where he could see more of his new environment. She allowed him free access to roam the holding rooms.  Yuki learned to trust Kristine.  No longer backing away when she reached down to touch him, Yuki eventually let Kristine pick him up, without protest, and hold him.

If Yuki was semi-feral, he is tame, now. He affectionately leans into Kristine’s hand for plenty of head and ear scratches. These days, when Yuki rests in her arms, Kristine detects, as if coming from a distant place deep within his body, the reverberation of contentment.

Although he is in good care with Kristine, Yuki needs a foster home where he can receive attention around the clock. As of now, there is not space for him in a sanctuary. Yuki is still waiting for a home.

- written by Síla ÓGrádaigh

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,

Open Letter

To all of the donors, clients, employees, volunteers, sponsors, friends and supporters of FixNation:

Each year, Los Angeles Magazine searches out to find a limited number of special companies and organizations that deserve to be honored and recognized as the “Best of LA” in categories representing the wide variety of goods and services that make up the rich texture of Los Angeles as a community. This year, we are proud to say that FixNation – your FixNation – has been named the Best in our category – stray cat (spay-neuter) clinic.

The cover and inside piece on this accolade, the latter featuring a photo of “Super Cat”, are on the pages which follow¹. Karn and I were invited to and attended the recognition party LA Magazine hosted last night at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where we met many other honorees and the publication’s key executives involved in this years BOLA. It was our honor to do so, not for the personal recognition it provided, but rather the opportunity it provides to shine the light on our mission – one that all of you share, and do so much to bring us closer every day to the end of feline homelessness and the dawn of humane enlightenment in our society.

Truly, you are the ones who deserve this award and recognition, so it is my genuine pleasure to share it with you in this spirit…

Sincerely,

Mark Dodge

President

¹ Article erred in citing our start year as 1999, which is when we launched Best Friends Catnippers. FixNation actually started in 2007.