Cat Days of Summer

Last Saturday, Best Friends hosted the  "Cat Days of Summer" at the Gateway.  They had arranged a space to bring in 200 cats from local shelters to see how many they could find new homes.  I so wanted to be involved so I volunteered early and was asked to work the "check out" area.

My role was to greet guests that approached the desk, accept their payment, and keep track of the number of cats adopted.  I spent the day volunteering next to Eric who's day job is a flight attendant.  He was full of energy and great fun to spend the day with.  It wasn't long before I realized he was probably an excellent flight attendant because he has the perfect personality for it.  We actually worked well together which made it a fun 7 hours.

They had set up a volunteer center next to the "cat house" which was nice.  There was a group of people waiting for the doors to open at 10:00!!  There were 9 different shelters there with mostly adult cats waiting for their forever home.  In the first hour, 11 cats had been adopted.  Mid day got a little slow but we got up to 32 cats.  Our goal was to beat the highest last event of 43 cats adopted.  Eric and I both accepted the challenge.  The last 2 hours were pretty busy with the last hour being just crazy with people finally picking their cat.  When it was all said and done, we had adopted out 57 cats!  This is fantastic!  I did get very teary for the cats that didn't get picked.  It is always hard to see that.  But all the places are "no kill" so I am confident they will find homes for those kitties.

What I really loved is spending the day around people that are animal advocates.  And the very best was seeing people so excited to pick a kitty to take home.  It really warmed my heart.  And although I was exhausted when it was done, I was happy to know I spent the day doing something good.  They were very happy with Eric and my work and asked if we would both volunteer for the Super Pet Adoption in September.  I would love too.

First adoption of the day.  Check out that happy little girl??
They were a cute family and came back and adopted a second
kitty after about an hour.

Part of the room of kitties.  I was in heaven.

One of the available kitties.  I realized they had people "socializing" the cats.
They would walk around with them and have "browsers" hold them.
What a great tactic.  Who could say no to a fluff they held??

Kim from Best Friends doing a segment for the news.  It was great
to see her in action to get people down to get a kitty.

The chalk board of names.  The white kitty was done in chalk by a local
artist.  Eric and I kept track of all the names and hash mark count.