Comment

Comment by Margy Meath on November 22, 2009 at 11:02am

I like Sheri's with one small change below - I omitted the "problem" part of the statement (re: life being untenable for ferals) - that's an important reason as to WHY the group exists, but I think that the 'mission' statement should be a reflection of the purpose/mission of the group.

19th Ward Community Cats believes that every cat should be treated humanely. It is our mission to improve the status of all cats in the Ward, domestic and feral, by fostering a healthy relationship between people and cats. We will educate neighbors about the plight of our feral cats, we will provide care for ferals, and we will reduce the feral cat population through humane means including TNR . We will assist cat owners and caretakers with acquiring necessary resources for the cats in their care, including veterinary care, shelter and food.

Comment by Alice Carli on November 22, 2009 at 9:33am

Thanks Sheri! This is just what I was hoping for -- different ideas going back and forth so that by next meeting we can come up with a really well thought out statement. Anyone else have other comments and ideas?

Comment by Alice Carli on November 21, 2009 at 10:22pm

Thanks Sheri!

And how about "19th Ward Community Cats works to foster a healthy relationship between people and cats in the 19th Ward neighborhood by educating all neighbors about humanely reducing the feral cat population, and assisting cat owners and caretakers with spaying or neutering and other health care for the cats they care for."

Comment by Mark Sweetland on November 20, 2009 at 9:25pm

How about adding to the mission statement that our goal is reduction of feral cats? As a last sentence. However you want to phrase it.

Comment by Inge Mallory on November 20, 2009 at 7:39pm

I like it.

Comment by Alice Carli on November 20, 2009 at 9:07am

Meanwhile, to everyone, how's this for a draft mission statement?:

"19th Ward Community Cats works to foster a healthy relationship between people and cats in the 19th Ward neighborhood by educating all neighbors about feral cat management and assisting cat owners and caretakers with spaying or neutering and other health care for the cats they care for."

Comment by Alice Carli on November 20, 2009 at 9:05am

Hi Sheri -- sorry you were sick! But I'm glad that Sundays are still ok in general.

Comment by Alice Carli on November 15, 2009 at 9:28pm

19th Ward Community Cats
11/15/09 Meeting Notes

Present: Alex Miokovic, Alice Carli, Christin Boggs, Heidi Nickisher, Laura Burns, Marian Boutet

WEB PAGE
Christin has offered to help us get a web page presence that will supplement our blog on Location 19.

We would like a page that is directly connected with 19wca.org (since we are an outreach committee of the 19th Ward Community Association); that we can use in promotion and building the group, for getting important information out about managing the feral cat population and caring for feral and pet cats in the 19th Ward, and as an on-line 19wca center for organizing our projects and fundraising. (The blog will continue to be extremely useful for this, but the web page will be important as our “public face” for the totally uninitiated and as a place (eventually) to have links to resources like vets lists and how-tos.)

Christin will meet with Ann Robinson to see what can and cannot be done within the current 19wca site in terms of hosting the page on the 19wca.org site as well as adding a cats@19wca.org e-mail contact; if these require a site manager password we cannot do it at this point. Heidi has offered to make inquiries through RIT regarding contacting the original web host, with whom the Association has lost contact after he became ill and moved out of the area. He did work for RIT and Heidi thinks he may be a former student. It would be wonderful if we could help regain contact, both to see how he is doing and to regain control of the site!

In the mean time, other important initial ingredients for the site are our “logo photo” of Marley (a feral cat being cared for by the Marlborough Road group), a mission statement, a PayPal donation button, and “contact us” information. Laura Burns recommended we check out www.neighborhoodcats.org as a sample of other sites, and http://www.aspcapro.org/spay-neuter/marketing-and-promotion/harlem-... for ideas about our spring event.

Marian has offered to have her e-mail address and phone number as the contact info on the web page, which is great, since she’s knowledgeable about both our group and 19WCA and the neighborhood. Thank you, Marian! Christin, (and anyone else who knows about this sort of thing) we will want to make sure that we present her e-mail address in such a way that it isn’t open to “harvesting” by spam sites -- we didn’t talk about that in the meeting, but it will be important!

[For the moment I would like our site to be (or at least look) as uncomplicated and welcoming as possible, so that people at whatever level they are now, whether that’s looking to be more involved and helpful, or for cheap neutering, or for someone to get that stray cat away from their porch, will be invited in and not scared away. This is in brackets because it’s just my opinion -- we have a lot of work to do together so there’s plenty of chance for people to chime in one way or another!]

MISSION STATEMENT
That bracketed paragraph leads right into the next topic: we decided that a mission statement is an important next step, and that we wanted to make sure that we took time to think and get lots of input before putting it on a web page! For THIS, http://www.location19.org/group/feralcatgroup (for those of you who get this by e-mail and not on this very site!) is definitely the best place to pool our thoughts, so that whatever we may have to contribute we will literally all be on the same page!

Please add your comments and suggestions, and we will see if we can get a boiled-down statement by next meeting.

NEXT STEPS
Besides the mission statement, there were some other steps that we all agreed need to be taken quickly. We need to work out our plans for the “spring event” in time to do the planning and fundraising that will be needed. More on that below.

Meantime, we also need to establish other information about ourselves and what we want to accomplish.
Laura can get “surrender rates” (how many people have dropped off cats) for 14619 and 14611 from Lollypop Farms and the city pound, and has also agreed to e-mail Heidi a list of veterinarians and feral cat organizations in the area.

We will need to decide for ourselves and communicate to the vets what we want, overall and from them in particular, for both our spring event and over the longer term, in the specific area of spaying and neutering. We had some discussion around the fact that while some vets are generous and helpful with pro bono work, others are extremely self protective when it comes to propping up fees for spaying and neutering. Considering the magnitude of the problem both reactions are understandable, but if we want to actually get a large proportion of 19th Ward cats (owned and feral) spayed/neutered it will require, well, more spaying and neutering than is currently conceived of by the majority of either residents or vets. This we can also discuss further on Location19.

SPRING EVENT
Finally, we talked further about exactly what all we want our “spring event” to consist of. We all agreed that it should be large and part of a long-range promotion of cat care. We also agreed that if we can offer some number of free spay/neuter slots, and use these like sweepstakes prizes, this could help get a higher response rate from a 19thWard-wide mass mailing which (we hope) the Neighborhood Service Team is (still) willing to offer. Doing it that way would give us the advantage of the word “free” without the problems of being overwhelmed. If we organize a way to follow up on all respondents so that those who don’t win the lottery will still have options in their price range (and/or be motivated to help us seek grant aid), we’ll both win friends and be that much closer to our goal of fewer fertile outdoor cats.

After discussing possible dates and venues one suggestion that we all agreed was good was to have the event be part of the Square Fair. That will hopefully bring more people to the Fair (if our mailing campaign is successful) and certainly bring more people to our event! Assuming we go forward with this it looks like the date should then be 6/5/10, since that’s the first Saturday of June. We might have the spay/neuter operations happen in the gymnasium of School 16, if 19WCA and the school’s insurance and rules can be coordinated to allow it, and if we can indeed find vets willing to work off site. Marian is going to sound out a vet friend of hers on the matter.

[It occurs to me that another way to work the spay/neutering into the event would be to have the operations happen totally separately, beforehand, wherever and whenever it turns out to be most convenient to do so, with pictures of happy neutered cats and maybe even some of the cats themselves there at the Square Fair.]

Which is all to say that there is a lot of planning to go for the Spring Event, and it will be good to continue that on Location19 as well. Some of the ideas for other Fair events include an adoption event, a chance for area vets to advertise their services, and a cat-related flea market table. Tips and information on caring for pet cats and feral cats, as well as our proposals for integrating into our overall cat care program ideas for solving classic neighborhood problems like predation, noise and spraying (and how TNR can help with the latter issues!) will also be very helpful at this stage, I would think.

NEXT MEETING
We scheduled our next meeting for 1 pm (to help out the Bills fans!) on Sunday, December 13th. If there are people for whom Sundays are not good, and who haven’t been able to register the problem because we’ve had the meeting time discussion ON Sundays, please say so!

In the mean time, I’m hoping we can get a lot done by working on line together. So I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing from everyone!

Alice Carli

Comment by Heidi on November 14, 2009 at 9:50am

Alice or Sheri,

At our last meeting, as Marian was getting the computer up and running, one of you (so sorry I can't remember who!) mentioned that you'd built one of those shelters out of the plastic storage bins but that none of your cats used it. Well, I'm wondering if I might be able to try it out on one of mine -- the little one who's become quite friendly and likes to petted but not quite ready to come into a house and/or for possible adoption. If so, could you possibly bring it to the meeting tomorrow (or would it be easier if I came by your house and picked it up)? Either way, see you all tomorrow!

Comment by Inge Mallory on November 14, 2009 at 7:56am

Marian.
I will not be able to attend the meeting. It's my weekend to volunteer at PAN. They are having "Fall for a Friend.....BIG Adopt- A-Thon". Could you please let me know the results of the discussions? I do want to keep up on the latest happenings.
Thank You
Inge

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