Grand Forks’ Kimberly Feeny rescued seven cats from a rural Grand Forks property Friday, Nov. 27.
Twenty cats had been living in a feral colony there, a brood loosely watched over by a well-meaning homeowner who started feeding a pair of abandoned cats three years ago. Feeny said she will return to the property to rescue the remaining 13 cats at a later date.
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Feeny has been fostering local kitties and placing them in forever homes in Grand Forks and neighbouring Castlegar and Nelson because Grand Forks doesn’t have a proper cat shelter.
“People seem to think that domestic cats can just fend for themselves outside as if they were wild, and that’s just not true,” she said.
Feeny, who works with the Kootenay Animal Assistance Program (KAAP), is sheltering, feeding, cleaning and generally loving her foster cats in a heated trailer outside her home, where she said she keeps cats of her own. The rescues are recovering from eye infections Feeny said are common among outdoor cats who live in a large colonies.
Her friend Lisa Valenta was busy administering the cats’ eye drops when The Grand Forks Gazette turned up Friday afternoon. Feeny had just arrived from picking up cat food and kitty litter donated by city residents. The pair hopes to nurse the cats to the point where they are well enough to be neutered, spayed and micro-chipped by a local veterinarian.
“Kitties aren’t something you can throw away,” Valenta told The Gazette. “They’re forever,” she said.
Feeny and Valenta are asking people to donate to the KAAP website at www.kaap.ca.
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