Cats Cradle Of The Shenandoah Valley Inc

Great thing to do for all these cats that need help in the valley. I have gotten 2 cats from you guys and that was one of the best decisions i have ever made!

Thank you for the wonderful service you provide! I started feeding a group of feral cats in my neighborhood and was very concerned about not being able to have them spayed/neutered. Your TNR program was God-sent! Lindy was wonderful to work with! Professional, efficient, dependable, communicating really well and with a big heart towards the furry critters. It was a pleasure to deal with her and can’t tell you how happy I am that you have such wonderful staff.

Cat's Cradle is a fantastic organization. Over the last 3 years we have adopted 4 cats/kittens in total from them. They all seem to get great care from their foster parents and vetting/micro chipped before going up for adoption. We have never had any troubles bringing a new cat into the house from Cat's Cradle. They do a really good job of screening the adopters and matching cats personalities with the situation they will be going into.

I highly recommend this organization to anyone looking for your long-term buddy! I do not believe you will be able to 1) know your cat/kitten is healthy before you take it home and 2) receive more advice or help from any place else like you do from Cat's Cradle.

I found and brought a stray kitten home in November 2016. For 6 weeks, I spent $340 trying to solve apparent UTI issues. She was finally diagnosed with bladder stones, requiring ~$1000 surgery. I have four other rescued cats and could not afford this. Within just a week of contacting Cat’s Cradle, we had a surgery set up with a vet that Cat’s Cradle works with. After the vet discount, and Cat’s Cradle grant generosity, I only paid $50 out of pocket. The process could not have been easier. Cat’s Cradle and the rescue vet were both AMAZING! They even found a vet close to where I lived! It was a wonderful experience to be able to save this kitten and integrate her into our home. Thank you!

I give Cat’s Cradle my unqualified thumbs up for the lifesaving work they do in our rural community, to reduce cat overpopulation, promote pet retention, and rescue/foster/adopt out shelter animals. Our organization, the intake shelter for the Cities of Staunton and Waynesboro and the County of Augusta, could not possibly continue to reduce our intake and our euthanasia rates without the partnership and ongoing collaboration with Cat’s Cradle.

Our shelter was opened by our local governments in the fall of 2011, when the prior public impound contract was not renegotiated. From the first day we opened our doors, Cat’s Cradle promised to work with us to avoid our kill shelter from becoming a killing field. And they have been true to their word! They have made our shelter, and the Page County Shelter, their two primary focus areas for rescue, foster and adoption, though they also do aggressive spay/neuter for the public, including trap-neuter-return (TNR), in Rockingham County, including the City of Harrisonburg). Their intake coordinator and their wonderful fosters have stepped up time and time again, to pull adoptable cats and kittens, spay/neuter them, and provide them medical care, sometimes extraordinary care, to give them a chance at a good forever home, or to get them ready to be on a transport to North Shore Animal League (a large no-kill shelter in New York) or the Pennsylvania SPCA (a no-kill shelter in Philadelphia), from which they can be adopted and not be at any risk of euthanasia. They also have worked with us to provide us options and solutions to offer community cat owners who come to us looking to surrender their cats. When we tell them that Cat’s Cradle can offer them low-cost spay/neuter through their partnership with the Anicira Veterinary Center (formerly Shenandoah Valley Spay/Neuter Clinic), the owners often will agree to retain the animals, or at least retain a momma cat and then have her spayed, and then usually Cat’s Cradle will pull the kittens into their foster program. Cat’s Cradle has also helped us in our adoptions by offering assistance with pre-adoption spay/neuter of our shelter cats and kittens, as their funding has allowed.

We can see directly the impact that Cat’s Cradle’s pro-active spay/neuter programs and pet retention programs are having in our community through reduced cat intake numbers, which has helped us in reducing our euthanasia numbers to no-kill levels!

Lindsey Huffman
Director
Shenandoah Valley Animal Services Center
Lyndhurst, Virginia

For the last four years I have been involved with Cat's Cradle as it expands its influence In Page County, VA. Page County Animal Shelter and Page SPCA, Inc. were searching for ways to help reduce the cat/ kitten euthanasia numbers. However, very limited budgets for both organizations hampered their efforts. A "concerned citizens" group, now Page Paws, formed and reached out to Cat's Cradle. Through this interface PCAS and PSPCA were able begin transfers to rescue facilities, to implement TNR programs and to offer low-cost spay/neuter services to our community.

Over the last four years the shelter intake rate has dropped by 30%. With the assistance of Page Paws personnel, Cat'sCradle has established cat/kitten fosters in Page County. The transfer to rescues has doubled in the last year. All of this is possible only with the financial assistance and mentoring of Cat's Cradle.

Last winter, we had a little feral, calico mama cat show up on our farm. She was so wild that we couldn't catch her until we discovered three kittens in the barn . . . Uh oh! We managed to find a home for one, lost another, and kept the third. Still unable to catch Mama Cat, we were totally surprised one morning to find five little blue-eyed beauties on our front porch! We were in real trouble at this point . . . FOUR of the five kittens were female, Mama Cat still wasn't spayed, and the remaining first kitten (a male) was himself close to sexual maturity. We tried to do the kitten multiplication problem, but were overwhelmed with what might happen if we could not get them all neutered and spayed! And, we were also overwhelmed with the sheer cost of having operations for all of them when we are both on fixed income and retired . . . 

We contacted Cat’s Cradle and found out that they had grant funding from the BISSELL Pet Foundation to help with Augusta County spay/neuter! Relief! A Cat’s Cradle volunteer taught us how to catch the VERY feral Mama Cat and the one remaining kitten from her first litter, and Cat's Cradle paid for both of their operations and their rabies shots. When the five new kittens reached two pounds, Cat's Cradle provided the necessary funding to schedule and pay for all the kittens’ operations and shots on one day! 
We are SO grateful! We now have a joyful little family of cats living with us at the farm. There's Mama Cat, Squeaky, Peanut, Callie, Rocky, Sweetness and Frankie! We love them dearly and they are assured of a happy home for their lifetimes. Best of all, we have no worries about many hundreds of kittens that we simply could not afford to take care of in the future. 
Peg Davis 
Middlebrook, VA