Sun Cities 4 Paws Rescue, Inc.: REDI Implementation Grant Report
How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?
Sun Cities 4 Paws Rescue has been working to be both more inclusive and to make it easier for anyone to be able to surrender an animal.
1) We started a “Surrender to Foster” program that is used for regular intakes of both cats and kittens, in which we ask the person wanting to surrender if they would be willing to "foster" the cat or kittens until we are ready for actual intake. It turns a six-week (or longer) waiting period into a three-week one.
The person wanting to surrender signs the cat/kittens over to us and we do all the needed veterinary care: vaccinations, testing and sterilization, etc., while the cat/kittens reside in the home of the person surrendering.
This is beneficial to both Sun Cities 4 Paws and the surrendering person. We keep much-needed cage space, reduce illness, and reduce the actual length of stay since the cat/kittens will not actually come into the shelter until they are adoption-ready and the surrendering person is able to turn the cat/kittens over to us much sooner than if they had to wait for available space.
We have saved an additional 16 adults and 120 kittens since we implemented the program and both parts, adult cats and kittens, are now permanent programs. Both programs started out a little slow, but the kitten surrender-to-foster program got much busier in June, when kitten season was at its peak.
2) Along with the Surrender to Foster for kittens, we have implemented a Foster Closet which contains all items needed to care for kittens. We provide (if needed/requested): KMR, nursing bottles, weight scales, baby food, canned food, dry food, litter and litter boxes, toys, beds, linens, and smaller cat trees/perches.
This has been a hit, as the fosters cannot always afford to purchase the needed supplies, especially if they are only fostering the one litter for us.
3) We also put our kitten foster and senior/special-needs foster applications online, making it easier for anyone who is interested to become a foster person. By putting them online, it saves the interested fosters from having to go to the Peoria shelter to fill out an application. We can contact them for fostering once they have been approved by our foster coordinators.
We received a $3,000 grant from the Petfinder Foundation for REDI Implementation. We used the funds to purchase prescription food that many of our cats are on. We also purchased KMR in bulk and neonate feeding bottles, along with warmers, baby food, and wet and dry kitten food to stock up our Kitten Foster Closet.
The remaining grant funds went towards purchasing medications for the cats in our care. Those funds purchased a large quantity of Clavamox in both liquid and pill form. This is our go-to antibiotic and we use a large amount every year.
How many pets did this grant help?
This grant helped/will help 50 adult cats (prescription food) and approximately 200 kittens.
Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.
Haillie (first photo) is one of many kittens helped by the funding from the Petfinder Foundation. She was a foster kitten who benefitted from the majority of the items we stock in our Kitten Foster Closet. She was recently spayed and is currently on Petfinder here.
Additionally, some of both our adoptable adults and our long-term residents benefited from the REDI grant that was used to purchase prescription food. Pictures are attached and Mianne (second photo) is currently waiting for adoption. You can meet Mianne here.
The additional pictures are of shelter residents with some of the prescription food and a neonate, Chalupa (third photo), who is still in foster.
