Forgotten Cats seeks adopters, volunteers to help feral population
TRAINER >> The outside of the building situated on a Delaware County treelined street appears plain and unassuming to passers-by. However, once inside the door, visitors cross the threshold to one of the largest cat rescue operations in existence in the Tri-state area.
Recently, Forgotten Cats hit a milestone of sterilizing 150,000 cats since its founding in 2003, thus preventing the birth and suffering of millions of kittens. Additionally, the nonprofit celebrates placing over 15,000 cats into loving forever homes.
Locally, Forgotten Cats estimates there to be more than 2,200 homeless cats in Norristown. Over the past 13 years, the organization has provided low-cost sterilizations for more than 1,250 cats from the area, which stabilized the growth of 325 colonies of community cats. Forgotten Cats gets calls from Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland about unwanted, stray, and feral cats. Operating several no-kill clinic/ shelters in Delaware and Pennsylvania, Forgotten Cats welcomes cats with no discrimination toward what felines are accepted - the no-kill organization
humanely takes in cats of all ages, even those that test positive with FIV and FeLV, or who are blind, tailless, three-legged, or with other chronic medical diagnoses.
On a daily basis, volunteers bring in cats that are lost, abused, and abandoned, giving them a chance for a better life.
“We can’t control our intake,” explained Felicia Cross, the founder and executive director of Forgotten Cats. “Sometimes we have 50 kittens coming in at a time and they can be unhealthy or healthy. You never really know until they arrive here.”
Unlike some other shelters, Forgotten Cats stayed open during the pandemic, making the nonprofit busier than any other time in its history, Cross said.
“We stayed open during the COVID pandemic because of great need,” explained Amanda Carney, the operations manager at the Forgotten Cats Trainer shelter. “Many other places were closed so pet owners that ordinarily may have sterilized their cats did not and we are now dealing with the result.”
One of the ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the recent births of thousands of kittens. Adding to that is the reality of Delaware County being in the height of kitten season, when homeless cats birth litters of vulnerable kittens who are now inundating local shelters, including Forgotten Cats. Since many organizations halted or cut back their spay/neuter programs due to COVID, this year’s banner kitten season is more severe than years prior and nokill organizations like Forgotten Cats are scrambling to find homes for them.
An unspayed female cat can have back-to-back pregnancies from spring through early fall, meaning one unspayed cat can produce 20 kittens in a single year.
“After that one unsterilized cat produces 20 kittens, the kitten population multiplies exponentially,” Cross explained.
Thus far in 2021, Forgotten Cats has already treated and sterilized 10,000 cats. The clinic/ shelter is holding 500 cats and kittens ready for adoption. Of those 500, 199 are adult cats over 4 months old and the rest are kittens. Additionally, there are 100 cats treated and ready for fostering.
Forgotten Cats, which runs the clinic and shelter in Trainer, is issuing an urgent plea to the public for help. Flooded with orphaned kittens as well as nursing mothers and their young litters, Forgotten Cats is asking people to either consider adopting a cat or to volunteer to be temporary fosters.
Fosters temporarily take in kittens who range in age from a few days to a few weeks, either with or without their mothers. Fostering nursing mothers and their kittens can be as simple as providing a small space in a home like a spare bathroom, bedroom or crate and providing the mother cats with food, water and a litter box.
Forgotten Cats also has older kittens in need of socialization to prepare them for adoption, as well as orphaned “bottle babies” who need to be bottle-fed by experienced fosters.
Cross of Wilmington, Del., founded Forgotten Cats after realizing the absence of such an organization in this region.
Back in the late 1990s, Cross lived in Ireland for a few years after her husband’s company transferred him there. She had adopted her first-ever cat in 1995. While in Ireland, Cross was asked to help catch a mother cat and kittens living in a parking garage that was going to be torn down. That 1998 incident opened her eyes to homeless cats. She began doing research and came to fully understand the plight of feral felines.
Cross learned more from Cat Action Trust, an English-based TNR organization. By the time that she left Ireland, she had already been instrumental in sterilizing almost 1,000 cats.
When she returned to the U.S., and realized that similar organizations were nonexistent in the area, she started Forgotten Cats, which quickly blossomed into what she believes is the largest trap and release organization in the United States.
Today, Cross personally owns six cats. She is still as active, as ever, in the Forgotten Cats organization that she founded over two decades ago.
Forgotten Cats is an almost all-volunteer operation. With only four paid employees and the services of four part-time veterinarians, the nonprofit organization depends on its pool of 700 volunteers to help in every aspect of its operation, including its TNVR (Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate, Release) services and presence in local adoption centers.
Forgotten Cats’ TNVR services involve volunteers working with colony caregivers to identify all cats within a colony, after which they trap, transport, sterilize, vaccinate, recuperate, and return feral cats to caregivers. Forgotten Cats owns four large vans which transport the traps to set in place. When they are filled with cats, they are brought back to the shelter with the same vans. The organization employs one paid trapper who works 50 hours each week. Forgotten Cats currently has 150 trapping requests on its waiting list from people who called in about stray or feral cats in shopping centers, parking lots, backyards and at other sites.
Cross explains that Forgotten Cats is so successful because it has the volunteer power to trap all of the cats in a colony at once, preventing more kittens from being born to perpetuate what otherwise would be a never-ending cycle.
“When smaller organizations drop a trap, they trap maybe two cats here, two cats there,” Cross explains. “If they’re going to trap a colony of 50 cats, they may trap two or five a week, and then put them back, and then go back and try to get two or five more. It doesn’t work because by the time you get 15 done, you’ve had 15 kittens born. You never really catch up.”
Forgotten Cats works in tandem with the Brandywine Valley SPCA, PURR Philly, ACCT Philadelphia, the Animal Coalition of Delaware County (ACDC), and the Stray Cat Release Fund (SCRF), all of which have the same mission of humanely treating cats and giving them a better life.
Forgotten Cats’ goal is to stabilize each colony and ensure zero population growth. The humane organization achieves this goal by trapping and sterilizing every single cat in the entire colony.
“I bet there’s not one other organization that has 50 traps out on the road at the same time,” Cross said.
Forgotten Cats also serves the community by offering affordable low cost spay/neuter services for pet and stray cats, and spay/neuter education.
About 20 percent of the cats that enter their clinics each year are not feral. Stray cats, or homeless domesticated cats, and feral kittens under 12 weeks old, are held and placed into its adoption network.
Cross said that most people think the Forgotten Cats is about helping animals, and it is, but it is also about helping people who call about feral cats and stray cats and they don’t know what to do with them.
Stray cats on the streets are either lost or left there following bad decision making. There are numerous reasons pet owners can no longer keep their cats. People might move, or go into an apartment or condo that doesn’t accept pets. Or an older person may have to go into a nursing home or move in with their adult children or pass away. If they are unable to find another home or a shelter, people will often walk off and leave the cat outside to roam and scavenge for food.
“We see an influx of unwanted cats in college towns,” Cross explained. “Often, college kids get a cute kitten and then when it’s time to go home after a school year, and mom or dad won’t let them bring their new pet home, they just leave the poor little cat to fend for himself.”
Stray cats are placed in the clinic/shelter for medical evaluations, just like their feral peers.
Forgotten Cats is always looking for volunteers at clinic locations in Trainer, Willow Grove and Sussex County, Del., to assist the veterinarians who run the clinics twice a week. Volunteers need little or no experience, only a willingness to help, Cross said. New volunteers will be trained and they learn quickly from others at the clinic.
Neal Ann Stephens of Arden, Del., is a volunteer at the Trainer clinic. She began volunteering five years ago after she retired from her job in the theatre program at University of Delaware and adopted a kitten from Forgotten Cats.
“I just thought it was a fun thing to do after retiring,” Stephens, who now owns five kittens, said. “We do really good work here, helping to solve the problem of homeless cats roaming the streets. We give the cats that we rescue the opportunity to live healthy and good lives.”
Clinic volunteers assist in the medical care of feral, stray and pet cats, giving flea treatments if needed, helping with intake, surgery prep, and recovery, as well as assisting veterinarians as vet techs. On a recent weekday, the vets sterilized 100 cats in a day’s work. In addition to sterilizing cats, the vets treat a wide variety of issues, including enucleations and amputations. Rarely, the vets decide to transport a cat to a specialist, at a specialty vet hospital, but most times the cats’ afflictions are handled on site.
After cats are nursed back to good health or sent to live in foster homes, they are kept in one of Forgotten Cats’ three shelter locations at Trainer, Willow Grove and Sussex County. Shelter volunteers are always needed to care for the cats as they await adoption or release back to their colony. Volunteers are asked to commit to one day for two to three hours, to cuddle and play with the cats, as well as assist with laundry, dishes, and cage/carrier sanitization whenever possible.
In addition to its need for trappers, clinic assistants, and shelter helpers, Forgotten Cats offers a variety of other volunteer opportunities. Volunteers must be 18 years old to work independently at Forgotten Cat’s clinics, shelters and adoption centers. However, if accompanied by a parent or guardian, volunteers with a belief in Forgotten Cats’ mission, can be as young as 15 to work at the shelters and clinics, and as young as 12 at their adoption centers.
With 10 off-site adoption centers, Forgotten Cats’ dedicated volunteers prepare the cats brought into them for adoption and ensure they go to loving, forever homes. Adoption Centers can be found at various off-site locations places, but locally they’re located inside PetSmart in Brookhaven, Glen Mills, Christiana, Levittown Town Center, Brandywine Town Center, Jenkintown and King of Prussia, as well as Petco in Pottstown and Pet Supplies Plus in West Chester. Volunteers are always needed to spend a few hours a week to help adoptable cats find their forever homes by overseeing their interaction with potential adopters and making sure the cats are fed and have a clean environment at the site. Last year alone, Forgotten Pets adopted out 2,200 cats.
For people who believe in the cause, but don’t want to leave their homes, Forgotten Cats needs volunteers to help with administration duties. Administration volunteers can perform a variety of tasks such as adoption processing, data entry, phone receptionists, graphic design, fundraising, and more. All volunteer time commitments and specific position descriptions are available on Forgotten Cats’ website.
Forgotten Cats depends on its volunteers to help fulfill its mission to humanely reduce the homeless cat population and to stop the suffering of the thousands of kittens born to abandoned, homeless cats. The organization receives no government funding, and depends solely on private donations, grants, fundraising events, and bequests. The organization charges adoption fees to help defray some of the costs. Donations help to provide safe shelter, spay and neuter services and medical care to abandoned and feral cats.
“Without our dedicated volunteers, and generous help from the community, we would not be able to accomplish our mission,” Cross said.
In addition to accepting monetary donations, Forgotten Cats accepts consumable donations of litter, dry and wet cat food, bleach, laundry detergent, clean sheets and towels. The organization posts a wish list for Amazon and Chewy.com.
In the past, grants have helped Forgotten Cats eradicate feral cat epidemics in New Castle County, Del., Claymont, Del., Coatesville and other places. Cross said they work continuously on the widespread problem of feral and stray cats in Chester and Philadelphia.
“What sets us apart from other organizations is that we not only sterilize the cats who come to us, but we do whatever it takes to get them healthy and into forever homes, to give them a good life,” Cross said.
Those interested in fostering can apply at forgottencats.org/foster-a-cat. Applicants are screened.
Those interested in volunteering, can fill out a form online at https://forgottencats.org/services/ volunteer or call 215-2198148. Those interested in adopting, volunteering, donating or with other questions can visit forgottencats.org or email info@ forgottencats.org.