6 Jul 2021

July Updates

by | posted in: Adoptions, Fundraising, General Updates, Volunteers | 0

Phew! We have been busy and in the best sort of way! Since bringing in our first cat, Bettie, on May 14th, we’ve brought in a total of 14 cats. We’ve had two adoptions so far: Mittens and Bettie. Currently we have two bonded pairs of cats who were surrendered to shelters and are looking for just the right home: Jacob and Sadie, and Twix and Snickers. We also have two young kittens, just 3 months old: Oreo and Smudge. We’d love to see them get adopted together! Rounding out our current residents: Michael, Missy, Duke, Archie, Phoebe, and Denzel. So far we have partnered with Ventura County Animal Services, Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center, Los Angeles City Shelters, Apple Valley Animal Services, and Shannon’s Fosters, and two private individuals.

In the lobby shop, we still have many handmade items such as earrings, cat toys, pouches, and tote bags, and we’ve started carrying catnip and toys from the company From the Field. We have to store those in sealed tubs at night to keep the cats out of them! We are working on bringing some items over from local Ventura company Whimsily Ever After. They make incredibly cute and fun toys for cats. Consider us when you need gifts for the cat lovers and cats in your life! Entrance to the lobby shop is free.

As we bring in more cats our need for food, litter, and cleaning products increases. We gratefully accept both in-kind and financial donations to help care for the cats. We have updated lists and Chewy.com and Amazon. If you’d prefer to donate money you can do so through PayPal or Venmo, or you can mail us a check or drop off a donation in person. We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and everyone working in the lounge is a volunteer.

We’ll be holding another volunteer orientation on Sunday, July 11th from 10-11am if you’d like to learn what all volunteering with us entails. We are working to build a robust team of volunteers.

Thank you for your continued support. Please spread the word about us to your friends and family and help us reach as many cat lovers as possible!

3 Jun 2021

Increased Hours, Volunteer Opportunities

by | posted in: General Updates | 0

We have 4 delightful cats in the lounge now and have increased our available hours. By mid-June we aim to offer regular days and hours for both reservations and walk-ins, and we hope to be able to bring in more rescued kitties for visits and adoptions. Right now you can come meet Bettie, Michael, Missy, and Mittens. All four are friendly. Missy isn’t a lap cat but the other three definitely are. Bettie is the shyest of the bunch but loves human attention. All four are estimated to be between 3-6 years old and will make wonderful companions to their lucky adopters. In the meantime, they are happy in the lounge and being well taken care of. You can what availability we have at any time by going to the Reservations page and checking the calendar at the bottom of that page.

We will be scheduling some volunteer orientations later this month. Once you’ve gone through an orientation you’ll be able to volunteer in the lounge and will receive access to our online sign-up. If you’ve already submitted a volunteer application you’ll be getting an email about the orientation sessions. Volunteering in the lounge as a host will involve socializing with the cats, welcoming guests, answering questions, gently but firmly enforcing policies when needed, cleaning litter boxes, cleaning/sanitizing the lounge, and anything else that might need to be done. If you volunteer to help open or close additional duties will be involved such as heavier cleaning, feeding the cats, taking out trash, etc. If you want to help in other ways (photography, marketing, special events) we will have opportunities for that too.

Hope to see you at the lounge soon!

19 May 2021

Limited Visits Now Available

by | posted in: General Updates | 0

We are going to offer some *very* limited lounge visits over the next 5 days. We have one super sweet cat living there now named Bettie, and we would love to have some visitors for her! 💙 Visits will be limited to just 2 people at a time and the price will be $5 per person for 30 minutes. You can see a very nice kitty and get a sneak peek at the lounge too! Reservations are required, as are masks. You can sign up for a visit here: https://www.cassiescatsandkittens.org/reservations/ Come say hello to Bettie (and help us work out any bugs in our systems, ha ha!).

Bettie
14 May 2021

Moving Right Along!

by | posted in: Fostering, General Updates | 0

The lounge is ready for cats and we are currently working with some local shelters and rescues, identifying kitties that will be good candidates for the lounge’s communal living environment. We were hoping to open in May – and we may still be able to! – but it all depends on having kitties who are comfortable and ready for visitors. We’re currently exploring the possibility of having limited hours and fewer visitors at a time if we aren’t at the capacity of kitties we’re hoping for. So we are looking at more of a “soft” opening until we can have a more “grand” opening. The mission has always been to help rescued cats and kittens find safe, loving, permanent homes, and we are definitely getting closer to being to do that with the lounge!

Pandora and her four kittens are still in foster with us. Pandora will be spayed on Monday and then go home to her furever home. She is a delightful, loving, playful cat and we’re so glad that she will have a loving home. Olive, Filo, Fig, and Honey are also already spoken for and will be getting spayed/neutered and then going home the first week of June. They are growing and developing perfectly and couldn’t be more fun! We will miss having that kitten energy around. We’ve been fostering basically nonstop since just before the covid shutdowns began in March of 2020, and the house will seem much quieter once we say goodbye to these sweethearts.

There is a video showing off the lounge on Facebook. We’ve made a few changes since then including a screen door between the lobby and the lounge and a slipcover for the white sofa, among other things.

We had a very generous donation come in and are so appreciative of all the support we’ve had for our future kitties. If you would like to contribute anything, food and litter will always be great! You can make a financial donation too and it’s tax-deductible. Our Support page gives all the details.

Looking forward to welcoming visitors to the lounge just as soon as we can!

1 May 2021

May Update

by | posted in: General Updates | 0

May is here! So much is happening and all of it is is good!

We have taken possession of the retail space at 1744 E. Main St, in Ventura. If you’re driving in midtown take a look and find where we are. We have started painting and will continue working on that through the weekend. We will also start assembling a lot of Ikea shelves plus some tables and chairs.

Since we started selling masks last summer we’ve sold over 640 of them! That is remarkable. We will continue to sell masks, pouches, cat toys, jewelry, stickers, and such in the lounge in our lobby area. We will also be exploring consignment, wholesale purchasing, and other partnerships.

We have relationships in place for working with other shelters and rescues in the area to identify cats to bring over to the lounge.

There are still things we would love to have donated! We will always need food and litter. We do not have any wand-type toys for the cats yet so some of those would be terrific. You can see all of our wishlists here:

Chewy.com
Amazon.com
MyRegistry.com

We anticipate a bit of a soft opening in May before we go full-speed ahead in June. Once we have things running smoothly we will share more about volunteer opportunities!

We are SO excited to be so close to opening and can’t wait to welcome everybody to the lounge! =^..^=

If you missed our sneak peek on Instagram you can see it HERE.