Name: Carol Long
Neighborhood: Burbank, California
About: I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, lived for three years in South Texas, and then moved to California in the late 1980’s. My first exposure to animal rescue came when I worked the hotline for Best Friends, responding to calls from the Los Angeles area. Some of the most frustrating calls came from people who had come across colonies of many stray, sick, starving cats, and were looking for quick and easy answers to finding them all a good happy home. My frustration over not being able to provide services which would even begin to solve these out-of-control situations led me to a group which focused on the only real answers to healthy management of stray cat problems, before they got to this out-of-control stage.
How long have you been volunteering with FixNation: Sometime in 2001, I began volunteering with Best Friends Catnippers, a predecessor to FixNation. Best Friends Catnippers was one of the earliest organizations in the Los Angeles area that offered free spay/neuter services for feral cats. Not long after starting as a volunteer, I was asked to take over as Volunteer Coordinator by Karn Myers and Mark Dodge, Founders and Executive Directors of both Catnippers and, eventually, FixNation.
What is one thing that people who have never volunteered with FixNation should know: People who have never volunteered in this field would probably be most surprised by the overwhelming numbers of homeless cats in the Los Angeles area, and the huge mortality rate of kittens born in the wild. While we can’t find homes for all of these guys (many are wild..), the most humane and effective service we can provide for them is free spay/neuter and vaccinations. It’s an amazing feeling to see 100+ sleeping feral cats at the end of a clinic, knowing they now have a chance at a healthy life, and will no longer be responsible for breeding mass numbers of unwanted kittens, many of whom would otherwise die of disease, starvation, or intentional cruelty before they reach adulthood.
