The Nine Lives Foundation is being run by completely disorganized, inept, unqualified, and unprofessional people. I emailed Nine Lives on 02/24/25 asking if I could donate to them homemade cat food. I received a response -- no name included on the email -- "Sure thing. We would greatly appreciate it. Thank you." I mailed two boxes of my cat kibble to them. No one acknowledged to me receipt, no one expressed any appreciation, and no one informed me if they wanted more. I telephoned and emailed them and received on 04/01/25 this email "Unfortunately, we are unable to use this type of food as it is homemade". Again no name on the email letter.
Nine Lives Foundation is an incredible organization. Volunteers are super friendly and knowledgable about cats - their adoption specialists are trained to help people find cats that will be the best fit with what they are looking for (personality, environment, friendly with other cats, etc). The cats are treated with the best care - staff is super mindful of giving extra attention to cats who need socialization the most and take extra care with new cats who need extra time to adjust. Barriers to adoption are on the lower end to ensure that more cats get adopted. Volunteers are also treated really well. All positive feedback. Highly recommend!
As a volunteer who began working with Nine Lives Foundation in 2019 and joined the board two years ago, I've had the privilege of witnessing firsthand the incredible impact this organization has on our feline community.
Nine Lives Foundation has saved countless cats and kittens in our area over the 5 years that I've volunteered. Their mission to provide lifelines for at-risk felines and offer affordable, compassionate care is more than just words - it's a commitment they fulfill every day.
The spay/neuter services offered by Nine Lives are a cornerstone of their work. By making these procedures accessible and affordable, they're tackling the root cause of cat overpopulation. This proactive approach not only prevents unwanted litters but also contributes to the overall health and well-being of cats in our community.
The medical care provided to sick and injured cats is truly remarkable. I've seen the dedicated team work tirelessly to nurse cats back to health, often taking on cases that other shelters might deem too challenging. From basic treatments to more complex procedures, the level of care is always top-notch.
The adoption services at Nine Lives are equally impressive. The staff and volunteers put great effort into matching cats and kittens with their perfect forever homes. They take the time to understand each animal's personality and needs, ensuring a good fit with potential adopters. It's heartwarming to see so many successful adoptions and the joy they bring to both the cats and their new families.
I've adopted several cats from Nine Lives over the years and they do a great job saving these precious lives! I'm proud to be associated with them.
Nine Lives Foundation is such an excellent organization! They are extremely dedicated to making the right match between us and kitties. With the help of the excellent volunteers and staff and their complete guide to introducing cats to each other, we were able to expand our kitty family successfully. This is our kitty Stella who is completely relaxed and happy after we introduced our new cat from Nine Lives :D We can't thank them enough for everything!
I am an adoption counselor and a foster parent for special needs cats for Nine Lives. When cats have special needs and cannot easily be adopted foster parents provide loving homes and care for these cats. These cats who most likely would not be adopted are cared for and loved in foster homes with care and medical support provides through Nine Lives.
Nine Lives works with local shelters to take cats and kittens whom the shelters cannot care for. They provide needed medical care until the cats are healthy enough for adoption or for a foster home. They provide spay and neuter services to trappers and the community. Nine Lives is working to protect and provide loving homes for otherwise at-risk cats and kittens.
As an adoption counselor I help clients seeking a cat or kitten to find the perfect cat for them. We strive to learn about our clients and to help them find the cat that meets their desires and needs. Every client is different and it is important to help them find the companion which will fit into their home situation and bring them joy so that the cat can be loved and well cared for.
I highly recommend Nines Lives as a resource for families wanting to adopt a cat or kitten.
We adopted our newest kitty cat, Lumlum, from the Nine Lives Foundation back in September 2023 and could not be happier with the experience we had! The staff and volunteers are friendly and knowledgeable, and their care and compassion for the cats really shows. They are really dedicated to taking great care of the cats and making the right match for helping kitties go to their forever homes. Thank you so much Nine Lives for bringing Lumlum to our family!
Nine Lives is an incredible organization. I was so impressed with the staff and the atmosphere at the shelter when I adopted one of my cats that I became a volunteer. Nine Lives genuinely cares about all the animals they take on and they have an excellent volunteer program. Not only does this benefit the cats in their care who get extra love and support, but it's an amazing opportunity for volunteers to feel valued as part of the organization.
It has been my honor to volunteer with NineLives for a few years now. Everyone who works there is always so kind and supportive and appreciative of volunteers and their dedication to helping cats and the community is inspiring.
This year, one of my activities has been to hand write monthly donor thank you cards, including an individual cat's story and photo. I want to share some of those stories here, since they can best represent how NineLives achieves its mission of saving lives, one individual cat at a time.
January 2024: Stitch is still a kitten, but his scars tell of a hard start in life. Then a partnership with the Merced SPCA brought him to NineLives and the healing hands of Dr. Desai. His adoring personality blossomed and this month he was adopted into a home full of hugs and headbutts! Thank you for transforming the life of Stitch and others like him! The critical partnership and medical care were only possible because of your donation!
March 2024: As a very sick and frightened senior, Prince needed more than two months of extensive medical treatment and foster kindness before he was ready for his forever home. Now his loving adopter says that he is chubby (despite no teeth), playful (despite his age and being FIV+), and a devoted snuggler (despite his former fear)! Thank you for your donation, which helps ensure Nine Lives never has to say "too old", "too sick", or "too scared," but instead can invest the time, love, and care needed to give every cat a new lease of life!
April 2024: Before kitten season is fully upon us, we want to share with you a memorial. Buster was already a declining 17 year old when his person passed on. But rather than being abandoned, euthanized, or kenneled, he spent his last 18 months in a devoted foster home, cherished until the end. From giving kittens a great start in life to ensuring every cat can live out their days in comfort, with care and love -- the Nine Lives family is committed to helping cats at every stage in life. Thank you for making that mission possible with your donation!
June 2024: We have found homes for over 270 kittens already this season! In addition to the hundreds adopted, Nine Lives also cared for thousands of local ferals. Through our Trap-Neuter-Return program (TNR), we ensure homeless cats and kittens like this little one are healthy, vaccinated, and spayed -- a lifeline for them and a break in the cycle of kittens being born to the streets. As one of the only TNRs left in the Bay Area, our work is critical. Amazing donors like you have stepped up tot he challenge, enabling us to help 100% more kitties this year! Thank you!
I have been a volunteer with Nine Lives Foundation for over a year and I'm so impressed with all aspects of the rescue. The cats are loved and cared for by staff and volunteers. Cats receive not only top medical care but also care and enrichment from a team of volunteers. The atmosphere is calm and relaxing which reduces stress for the cats. Nine Lives Foundation works tirelessly to find homes for the cats in their care and it's astonishing the number of adoptions that are processed. Volunteers and staff work to find the best match for adopters. I'm so grateful for all that Nine Lives Foundation is doing to save lives.
Nine Lives saves at-risk cats in the Bay Area. Once cats come to Nine Lives, they stay under the care of NineLives as long as necessary for them to find homes. During that time, they receive necessary medical care (including spay/neuter surgery and vaccines) and cat enrichment by volunteers to make their stay as pleasant as possible while they wait for a home. Nine Lives also offers low-cost spay/neuter surgeries to help with the overpopulation of cats and low-cost vaccines to pet owners in the community.
I've been volunteering with Nine Lives for 5+ years now, and liked their work so much I've joined their board to help even further. Nine Lives wants to make a real impact in the community, being inclusive and taking in as many cats as possible from high-risk shelters to find them forever homes.
I have been volunteering at the Nine Lives Foundation adoption center and clinic for just over a year. Throughout this time, I have been repeatedly impressed by their efforts to place cats and kittens in forever homes and to manage the population of feral and homeless cats in our community. The first thing that impressed me the most is there willingness to intake at risk cats and kittens from other shelters in the Bay Area. When a shelter doesn't have the space or resources to properly care for an animal Nine Lives will nine of ten times take in the cat. The efficient operation at the low cost spay /neuter/vaccine clinic, staffed by highly competent bilingual vets and assistants, is open all week from 7:30 to 6pm. Last year they processed 4109 spay/neuters a 20% increase. Finally, the organization is committed to the highest standards for a No kill shelter and focuses on the rescue of the most vulnerable kittens and cats all year round and especially during kitten season.
I adopted from Nine Lives twice, and became a volunteer, and then a board member.... this organization now provides the best shelter care for our rescued cats and follows leading-practice surgical protocols in our high-quality, high-volume spay/neuter clinic (Nine Lives surgeons do 30 spay/neuters per day, so they are the ultimate experts - your cat is in the best hands!)
If you are looking to adopt a cat, or you beloved cat/kitten needs spay/neuter surgery, vaccines, and/or microchipping, this is the place to come!
I started volunteering at Nine Lives in 2019. It's an incredible organization that really cares about cats and helping people find the right match.
Nine Lives Foundation is a small but mighty non-profit, making a lasting impact on the lives of so many cats. I am so thankful they exist for our furry friends in need of love and homes and the humans that love them!
My husband and I adopted our adult cat from Nine Lives and I've been volunteering with them for about 6 months. They do such an amazing job of caring for cats. It's a stressful time in the life of a cat to be in a strange place with unfamiliar cats and people. With their Fear Free methods and attention to the particular personality and needs of each cat, Nine Lives does such a great job of making this experience as positive as possible. I've been really impressed by the way they can balance the difficult decisions and save lots of lives while not stretching resources too thin and diminishing the level of care they can provide.
I'm so thankful there's a rescue out there that helps the less "desirable" cats and provides resources to try and minimize the feral cat colonies in the area. Dr. Rutiger works endlessly to help the cats of San Mateo, just the other week she did over 30 surgeries (primarily, if not all, spays and neuters) in ONE DAY.
We adopted our cat of an unknown age (6-8 years old), Fluffy turned Mouse from Nine Lives. Mouse had originally been trapped and brought to Nine Lives when she was 3 or 4 as a TNR (trap neuter release), but the Foundation thought they could adopt her out and they did. She ended up back at the rescue for unknown reasons, and there she stayed for 5 months. As an older lady with a hard background, Mouse wasn't the most outgoing cat in the shelter so she was overlooked. Especially since everyoneeee wants kittens. But luckily we found her and she's now a part of our family, thanks to Nine Lives Foundation taking in a not so easy to adopt cat and giving her a chance at the life she deserved.
Review from Guidestar
I'm so grateful that Nine Lives Foundation saves cats considered special-needs or hopeless, cats that other shelters won't take. As a result, they saved our sweet Koko, the best cat we've ever had.
Koko our grey tabby was stepped on at 2 months old by his first family. This incident broke his jaw and even part of his brain was exposed. After one night at the vet the family wanted to put him down. Dr. Monica Rudiger was working there and told them about her no kill shelter called Nine Lives Foundation. They gave Koko to her and never followed up with her again.
I came to volunteer 8 years ago at Nine Lives when Koko was 3.5 months old. I learned about his sad story and Dr. Rudiger said she did not know if he was blind in one eye from being stepped or he was born that way.
He was like Steve Young after many head injuries when we first brought him home. I had a month off work so I worked with him every day to make him stronger and after three months he was playful kitten.
About a year later he started to have seizures. We were told that this sometimes happens and he would have to be on meds his entire life which may not be long....But we wanted to know why he was getting these seizures that we had to keep increasing his meds. So we had an MRI done and the neurologist vet said he had never seen this before. Koko only had half a brain. The other side of his brain is filled with fluid. I called my friend Bill who is cat lover, who had my first cat Leticia two sons, Linus and Rolo who is an epileptic neuro-surgeon at UCSF. He explained it’s a virus that happens in people and in animals and if it happens early enough the good part of the brain can compensate.
Koko runs, eats, plays and uses the litter box perfectly. He loves our other 3 cats and they all accepted him. He sometimes runs into things but does not seem to mind. He loves to listen to you are a Rich Girl by Hall and Oates well I have been singing it to him since he came to live with us. He also loves to listen to my husband play guitar and gently puts his paw on my husbands’ shoulder when he makes a mistake.
Koko thinks he is human and whatever we are eating he wants to try. Some of his favorites are pot roast, steak pizzola, spicy beef with broccoli, filet migon, focaccia bread, and the cake part of cupcakes. But his normal diet is high protein and high fat to reduce his seizures. He loves coconut oil but it has to be organic or he won’t eat it. Dr. Monica Rudiger has kept a close eye on his liver enzymes with his medication and we have been able with diet reduce his medication.
Two years ago at the age of 43 I had a massive stroke and almost died. When I was in the hospital starting to speak one of the words they choose for me was Kokogogo- the doctors did not know we had a cat named Koko. I had to relearn to walk talk etc. Both my husband and Koko always wanting to be by my side gave me such comfort. My husband was even going to sneak Koko into the hospital.
Koko is an inspiration to us as he had such a tough start and is such a loving cat.
Nine lives saves cats from other high kill shelters. They saved the best cat we have ever encountered. We will always adopt special needs pets and from Nine Lives Foundation as they always save cats from being put down from other shelters. They are a true no-kill shelter. They don’t discriminate by breed, sickness, or physical disabilities.
They do all of this without any corporate funding.
These are the reasons why I choose to give my time & money to Nine Lives Foundation in Redwood City, California.
www.ninelivesfoundation.org
Review from #MyGivingStory