Twelve years and counting
If you’ve ever ordered any cat products online, chances are you’ve seen this iconic photo.
About a decade ago, two kittens named Chloe and Zoey were the stars of a photoshoot we did with our friends at K&H Pet Products. You can see that everyone had a great time squeezed into our small space back on 21st Street!
K&H also donated new and gently used equipment over the years, so when we found ourselves struggling with rising veterinary expenses, we decided to have an auction.
Our Happy Cats family really came through in purchasing this great equipment for our kitties, and helped us meet our financial obligations.
When we contacted the kittens’ guardians to see how they were doing a decade later, we found the cats, now Cleo and Amun, are as still as mischievous and loving as ever! Their catmom Stacey said they had never had cats before but she can’t imagine life without them now.
Even better, Amun and Cleo got a little brother out of the deal! Delorean came from another Colorado shelter that needed help placing their kitties and we were happy to step in. Keeping with the Egyptian theme, he’s now Imhotep and loves his new cat daddy.
Equal effort for all
As always, our adopters are the biggest share of our Happy Cats Family. Their stories keep us all going during the challenging times.
We worked extra hard once again to find those perfect matches for our more vulnerable adult cats and seniors who made up 56% of all our adoptions. Evvie, with her best friend Gabriel, is another good spokescat for cats who got another chance at a happy life at Happy Cats.
A former teen mom who was rescued from trying to protect her babies outside, she now has a loving home with Gabriel and Hermes. Her guardian Janice speaks for all our adopters when she says, “I love her so much and feel so fortunate that she found me thru Happy Cats!”
We know from experience that kittens or cats who go home with a sibling or paired friend adapt to their new families with less stress. Thanks to generous Petco Love and Petfinder Foundation grants for our Friends & Family discount, 57% of all our adoptions helped pairs, triples and even one quadruple go home to their forever families.
We are also grateful to be partnering with Colorado Springs’ only cat cafe, the Biscuit Factory Cat Lounge. Based on the Japanese cat cafe model of getting time with kitties plus a beverage for the entrance fee, the Biscuit is helping us showcase our wonderful adults and find even more of them homes.
Fostering creates Happy Cats
Most of our cats and kittens come through our Foster Program, 92% of all adoptions in 2023.
As always, we leave no momcats like Evvie behind when rescuing their kittens. Sometimes they need extra time and care to settle back into domestic life after fighting hard to keep themselves and their babies alive when abandoned outside.
Our foster families also put in long hours making sure our kittens are gently socialized to grow into loving, adaptable cats just like Amun and Cleo!
Fostering is the perfect way to have kitty companionship if you can’t care for a cat fulltime. It’s just right for military families or seniors who want to travel but still want kitty companions when they’re home.
It also brings our families the joy of kittens without contributing to feline overpopulation. Please tap below if you would like to join our loving foster families as they help each cat and kitten become their best selves!
Tap here for our Happy Cats Foster Application
Reclaiming love
Scores of cat-friendly volunteers give their time and love to the kitties every single day. They socialize, they handle messages, they transport, and most importantly, they help keep our colonies super clean!
Last year, 88 of our cats and kittens needed extra help to become adoptable, 21% fewer than 2022. They included Dobro, one of nine from a single hoarding case.
We’ve worked hard to develop and refine standard behavior modification techniques that we can share with our Behavior Team. They spend countless hours gaining the trust of these special cats and helping them recover into adoptability, like Dobro, now called Beef.
We also received grant funding for a special campaign to help find just the right adopters for them. Our Superhero Program lets them go home with extra equipment, training and support to keep them in their homes.
By year’s end, 80% of those cats had found their forever families, including almost all from 2022 and the last of those from 2021 when we started the program!
TNRCares
Prevention is still the best solution for feline homelessness. Our TNRCares Program, under the direction of TNR Coordinator Barb Jones, worked hard this year to fix 364 cats and rescue 204 kittens and moms from the street, preventing thousands more from the homeless kitties experience of suffering.
Partnership with our local Humane Society continues to strengthen. With the help of their TNR manager Sam McPartland, we transferred even more of the most vulnerable kittens to our Foster Program to be socialized into Happy Cats. We also began transferring adults from both their Colorado Springs and Pueblo campuses.
Barb and her TNR team continue to provide food for 330+ fixed cats per day in colonies we helped stabilize throughout the region. Along with individuals who contribute, we are especially grateful to Champion Pet Foods and Greater Good for donating cat food to help us feed them.
Community cat surgeries plus those of our shelter cats contributed 883 spays and neuters to Pikes Peak area cats in 2022, preventing the suffering of thousands of cats and kittens.
Fighting inflation
In spite of the fact that our hardship surrenders were down 35% from last year, we faced big increases in costs across the board. In line with nationwide trends, food went up 47% in 2023 but our litter went up a whopping 73%!
The good news is that in the midst of an ongoing nationwide shortage of veterinary care, we were able to hold down medical cost increases to only 12%. This is thanks to our donors plus a generous Banfield Foundation grant in 2022 who helped us build our in-house spay/neuter clinic last year.
We couldn’t do it without the support of our compassionate veterinarians Dr. Quinn and Dr. Staus. They have also trained a team of amazing volunteers who help with surgeries almost every single week.
Because of your support, In 2023, we did 87% of all our spay/neuter surgeries in-house, lowering those costs by 16%, even with our investment in longterm equipment!
Help from our friends!
In 2023, 1000+ individual donors just like you showered the kitties with everything from toys to cans of food to handmade equipment to dentals to cars to help us keep our doors open!
You helped us keep our doors open by donating during Colorado Gives and the Give! Campaign, our big yearend fundraising campaigns. Our Guardian Angels, those who commit to monthly donations, increased by 10% in 2023!
The kitties’ needs never stop, so if you can’t volunteer your time or help with fostering, please consider helping us in these many ways:
- Drop off food, litter or gently used goods anytime during open hours (please ring the bell by the back door) or daylight hours behind the wall in front of the front door
- Follow our Wishlists—both for regular care and foster kittens—to order and ship items anytime
- Craft blankets, toys and items for us to use in-house or sell at events
- Get a King Super Rewards Card and designate us so Kroger can donate with every dollar you spend
- Become a Guardian Angel by donating monthly with our set-it-&-forget-it program
- Donate your old car
- Gift part of your legacy when planning your estate with our Heritage Program
Meowdy Partner, our Acatemy Awards western-themed gala is coming up on April 27th, so save the date for a fun night of feline themed auctions, great food, music and all things cat!
If you have favorite services or items to donate, please let us know!
Huge purrs and headbonks to our extended Happy Cats Family
for your continued support!
2023 by the numbers
651 cats & kittens found their forever homes,
Including 56% adults & seniors, up 4% from 2022
(this includes 139 catolescents who were counted as kittens by PACFA)
819 total cats & kittens found safe haven at HCH in 2023,
including 168 cats in care on 12/31, up 22%
88 cats & kittens received extra behavioral care
from our Onsite Behavior Team, 11% of all cats in care and
80% of those cats were adopted by year’s end
597 cats & kittens were fostered by loving families, 92% of our adopted cats
369 bonded cat friends & siblings were adopted together,
including 5 triples & 1 quad, 57% of all adoptions
Total veterinary costs in 2023: $125,565, up only 12%
Total spay/neuter costs: $25,782, down 16% because of our in-house surgeries
519 adopted cats & kittens and 364 community cats were fixed in 2023,
for a total of 883 spays and neuters…
preventing thousands of needless cat & kitten deaths
Thousands of followup emails, texts and phone calls were made
to help keep cats in their homes
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Our Staff
Genesis Reyes-Martin, Cat Care Manager
Katherine Luce, Foster Manager
Katie Uncapher, Operations Manager
Andrea Jones, Volunteer Manager
Thomas Paulus, Lead Colony Technician
Haley Hunter, Adoptions Manager
Nanette Walker Smith, Events Coordinator
Alyssa Honeycutt, Development Coordinator
Ben Van Til, Medical Assistant
Paige Gaydos, Adoptions Assistant
Megan Younger, Medical Assistant
Jen Espinoza, Cleaning Assistant
Our Veterinary Partners
Furry Friends Mobile Veterinary Clinic
Bijou Animal Hospital
Our Family Vet
HSPPR Surgery Center
Animal Clinic of Woodland Park
Fox Run Veterinary Hospital
Village Center Veterinary Care
Urban Tails At Home Veterinary Care
White Whiskers Aging Pet Care
Our Give! Matching Donors
Adams Mountain Cafe
In Honor of Robert Amos
Anonymous
Sue & Dave Cattoor
Happy Cats Board
Betsy & Chris Miller
Janice & Alan Obye
Lisa & Jerry Pibal
Playtime Pet Sitters & Dog Walkers
Sarah Roach
Vickie & Gaylord Smith
St. Paws Thrift Store
Our Grantors
Jackson Galaxy Project & Greater Good
Petco Love Foundation
Petfinder Foundation
Rescued Hearts Unique Boutique
Our Board
Bill Daughton
Susi Holmes
Ray Ferguson
Gaye Bosley-Mitchell
Lindsay Weatherford
Laura Ettinger-Harwell
Janet Fritz
Barb Jones
Nick Zavatti
Sara Ferguson
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