RIT, the Bean Farm, and Factory A's Cats

I'm so glad to be helping out RIT's Caring Hearts program. It's nice to be in league with people who have the experience and resources that they do (and I don't). So far, they've brought in 2 cats from the RIT campus and 2 from the Bean Farm right here in Henrietta. I believe they are going to try to bring in two more from the Bean farm this Friday.

I think I've mentioned before that in addition to TNRing their own campus' stray and feral cats, Caring Hearts tries to take on one "project" at a time. Their most recent venture has been a farm (not very far from my house, actually). The owner of the farm, Mrs. B, takes care of the barn cats, but was a bit overrun when Caring Hearts stepped in to help. They've sterilized over 35 cats there, I believe. Being a farm, and right on a main road, I imagine that heartless and uneducated peoples drop their cats off in the near vicinity. Fortunately, the situation has been stabilized, but she's had some recent additions. Two were brought in last Friday, both all black, one missing part of his tail, I think? She will be trying to trap a couple more for this Friday.

RIT's Caring Hearts will also be lending a hand to the leader's brother's factory's cat issue. Wow. Bad sentence. There is a factory... with kilns... and kilns are warm, I'm thinking. At least, some cats got in, made a home in the empty kilns, and started making babies! They went to fire up one of the kilns and heard babies mewing! Can you imagine how horrible it would have been to have not heard them? I'm so glad they decided to make noise at the right time. Fortunately for those lucky kitties, all found good homes.

Some of the cats are tame, some are feral. Most of the workers are coming together to raise money for the cats to be sterilized and to find homes for the socialized kitties. The feral ones will be brought to our hospital for surgery and will be allowed to live out their lives at the factory. The cats need to be done ASAP, though, because as time goes on, the more babies made, and the more of a "nuisance" they will be. The people in charge at the factory are okay with a small number of sterilized cats living on the premises, but if the population explodes, they will want to call an exterminator. Hopefully they will only have ten to fifteen cats at the factory when they are sterilized and rehomed.

This factory is not in Henrietta, but when I talked to the CSR supervisor, she said that because we are working with the RIT group, and the RIT group is the one helping them, we can let it slide that they are not located in the town.

I wish we could help everyone. I wish we could spay and neuter 50 cats a week (haha). But I guess slow progress is better than no progress...