Jigsaw Puzzle Tournament

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On Saturday, August 6th from 2-4pm, we will be hosting a jigsaw puzzle tournament. We will be hosting three tables with up to four people at each table. Each team/table will have 75 minutes to work on a 750-piece puzzle. You’ll also have at least 30 minutes to visit with the cats! The first place team will each win a free one-hour visit to the lounge, a free Cassie’s Cats sticker, and their choice of a free puzzle from our current selection of donated puzzles. Everyone who attends will win something!

Please see more details below and register now! $25 per person and all proceeds benefit the cats and kittens of Cassie’s Cats.

Yard Sale Saturday June 25th

We are holding a yard sale fundraiser on Saturday June 25th 8am – 2pm. Please stop by and help us raise critical funds for the cats and kittens in our care! Each foster kitten, once weaned, can easily eat 1.5-2 cans of food a day. We have 12 kittens in foster which means 18-24 cans of food every day. If you can’t shop but want to help out we welcome donations from our Amazon and Chewy wish lists. Thank you!

March Updates

Since our last update we have had 6 more adoptions: Bandit, Willow, Phoebe, Simba, Bambi, and Missy! Yes, Missy, who joined us as one of our 4 original cats back in May 2021. She is settling into her furever home and has become quite the little snuggler (when she wants to, of course!). We are so happy for all of the kitties who found their homes.

In the first 3 months of the year we had about roughly 310 volunteer hours donated by nearly 20 volunteers. (That is in addition to the hours that Jennifer puts in.) We had approximately $1700 in food and litter donated, and we had nearly 400 visits! We have started doing First Friday evening events and have had a few visitors during each of those. The next one will be May 6th from 6-7pm, so mark your calendar.

At the lounge we currently have 11 cats and kittens: Michael, Rachel, Cindy, Coral, Kiki, Ivy, Oliver, Jasmine, Cassie, Sam, and Steve. We also have baby Monte in foster and you can see him on Facebook and Instagram under Melt Your Heart Meow’s accounts (Shannon Evans, longtime Greyfoot Cat Rescue volunteer and current Cassie’s Cats volunteer). We also have two young, friendly pregnant cats in foster together with another one of our volunteers (thank you, Gina!). All told we have taken in 59 cats and kittens over the past 10 months.

Looking ahead, we hope to do a community garage sale fundraiser this summer, a silent auction next fall, and a holiday market with contributions from local makers. We are also working on a fundraising event with Four Brix Winery on May 27th!

Kitten season is well underway so if you are interested in being a part of the solution please help out with efforts to spay and neuter community cats in our area.

January-February Updates

January seemed to fly by! Here we are in mid-February already. The new year is off to a good start for the lounge. We had 10 adoptions in January alone! Congratulations go out to Snickers and Twix, Blaze and Kindle, Tonks and Fleur, Dear Heart and Sweet Heart, Hedwig, and Hershal. Snickers and Twix had been with us since mid-June 2021 and we were particularly thrilled to see them go to a wonderful home! This month we have had three adoptions so far: Jacob and Sadie, and Brave Heart. To see Jacob and Sadie adopted was beyond gratifying. They, too, had been here since last June, and at their ages (11 and 13) we know it would be harder to find them a new home. We are glad they could stay with us while they waited for their people to find them. Congratulations to all of the kitties who found homes over the last 6 weeks!

We’re currently housing 11 other cats and kittens: Michael, Missy, Rachel, Coral, Cindy, Simba, Kiki, Bambi, Oliver, Ivy, and Jasmine. Of these 11, Michael and Missy have been with us the longest, arriving in May 2021. Rachel has been with us for nearly 6 months now. They each have their own quirks and because they’re also slightly older (4-6 years old) they’ve been harder to place. But we know their purrfect people are out there somewhere! In the meantime, they’re happy and safe in the lounge.

We have a couple of particularly shy cats right now: Coral and Ivy. Coral has accepted full-body pets from a few volunteers so we know she has it in her to warm up and be a sweet little companion. She likes to sidle up to Michael and he seems to let her, and she also likes the company of her sister Cindy. Ivy will let the volunteers pet her but she does not like to come out of her bed while lots of people are in the lounge. She is bonded with her brother, Oliver, who is very friendly and fairly confident. These are not going to be our easiest adoptions but we have faith that we will get them into their purrfect homes eventually.

Bambi is currently our youngest cat. He’s about 5 months old and high energy! We’ve nicknamed him Bam Bam. He had terrible eye infections before he was rescued and while that has led to some scarring and perhaps a slight loss of vision, he acts 100% like a normal kitten. We’ve had him on a medical hold while we sort out some soft stools but fingers crossed he appears to be finally rounding that bend!

Our newest cat is Jasmine who’s at least part Siamese. She’s about 2-3 years old and is very friendly and playful! She had a traumatic birthing experience (thankfully she was safely in rescue by that point) but now that she’s spayed and indoors she’ll never have to go through that again. She has a naturally short tail that was also broken at some point in her life so for the most part it hangs down but so far we haven’t noticed it affecting her in any way.

Kiki and Simba are a sibling pair (not bonded) of sleek black house panthers! They are friendly and playful and would basically create an instant feline family for anyone lucky enough to adopt them. This is an early video of them; they now roam freely around the lounge and love getting attention!

Our feline Valentine fundraiser was a big success! We sold 91 Valentines at $5 each, and it’s been a treat to see so many beloved kitties honored in our front window. We’re already looking forward to offering this opportunity next year.

Speaking of fundraising: We have a couple of ideas already brewing for later in the year. We’d like to try a silent auction, and we’d like to expand our holiday market. It’s too early to move forward on either of those ideas just yet but tuck them away for the future!

We have been tracking food and litter donations more closely this year as well as volunteer hours. In January we received nearly $600 in food and litter donations, and volunteers other than Jennifer contributed roughly 100 hours of socializing cats, helping with cleaning, and assisting guests. We held an orientation for new volunteers in January and will have another coming up in the next few weeks.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you! We truly appreciate all of the support we get from our followers and couldn’t do what we do without your moral, financial, and in-kind support. If you’d like to see our current wish lists we have Amazon and Chewy wishlists. We’ve also started a foster kitten wishlist in anticipation of helping out once kitten season gets going.

2021 Wrap-Up

2021 has been a very good year for Cassie’s Cats! We have brought in cats from unhappy and/or unsafe situations. We have had adoptions. We have recruited a team of volunteers. And we have had many, many visitors. Here are some numbers to help illustrate our year:

Adoptions: 26! We’re so happy for the 26 cats and kittens we’ve helped find their furever homes. You can see them on our Success Stories page. We have 17 more cats and kittens currently in our care.

Volunteers: We have had 20 people volunteer at the lounge, helping to socialize kitties, talk with guests, feed and clean, transport cats, and more. We have a great team of caring people helping our cats and kittens stay safe, happy, and healthy.

Partners: We have worked with 6 shelters and rescues: Ventura County Animal Services, Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center, Los Angeles Animal Services, Apple Valley Animal Services, Foundling Kitten Society, and Stray Paws Animal Haven. In addition, we have worked with private parties and other rescuers, including Shannon’s Fosters and Moore Veterinary Care. Six of the kittens we’ve brought in came straight off the streets.

Spay/Neuter: We took in 7 kittens who were not spayed/altered and made sure that they had surgery to prevent future litters.

Pairs: We have adopted out 3 pairs of kittens: Oreo and Smudge, Willow and Angel, and Andy and Alex.

Visits: From September 1 to December 22, we had 314 visits to the lounge. During those 3 months, the most popular time was 2 pm (61 visits) and the most popular day was Saturday (126 visits).

The Cats: Our oldest resident is Sadie (13 years, 8 months). Our longest-time residents are Michael and Missy (220 days as of 12/27/21).

Donations: We have had countless donations of food, litter, treats, toys, and other in-kind donations. Because of that generosity, along with the financial donations we have received, we are proud to be ending the year in the black, financially. Our goal has always been to have a cushion in the bank to help us weather lean times, and continued generosity means we can take on cats and kittens who might need more medical attention.

We are looking forward to 2022! If you would like to donate to us or get involved, please check out our Donate page and our Volunteer Application.