Save the Kitten Nursery! We believe we can!

My name is Cathy Black and I retired from accounting work in 2019 at age 61. Realizing the great need for help and full of compassion for all animals I founded the Woodstock Kitten Nursery & Rescue (WKNR) in 2020. I have always fostered cats and kittens and I understood the need for more help with the out of control feline population and to stop the spread of disease in our area. We opened a non-profit corporation in 2020 and obtained our Registered Charity Status in January of 2021.

Our mission is to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome abandoned pregnant cats, orphaned kittens and abandoned mommas with babies. We take in the tiniest, most vulnerable and most needing around the clock care when there is no where else for these tiny creatures to go. We believe that every life is worth saving and strive our best to do that.

We also strive to provide a safe place for our seniors and disabled community members to be able to come out and have mutually beneficial workshops to find peace and offer activities and games while spending time socializing with our resident cats and kittens. We have had a couple successful trials through local funding for the United Way like the Paws & Whiskers - A Community Program but the funding for this program has dried up and our priorities must remain with our rescues. Our dream was to have a separate building on a property that would house the kitten nursery for many years to come. We, as the main benefactors, Cathy Black and Harold Wierenga, have been subsidizing the use of our basement for the last 4 years and are now at the end of our ability to keep it going without your help. In the last 4 years we have rescued and rehabilitated over 500 cats and kittens and the need keeps growing.

In 2022 we had a major setback when we purchased a property in a village outside the city of Woodstock which already had a large outbuilding perfect for our needs for the kitten nursery. After purchasing the property we ran into a lot of issues with prejudice and neighbours who did not understand our mission or how we were planning to use the property. Blinded by misinformation and heavy handed tactics by the opposition, we were shut out and unable to obtain the special zoning required for the nursery. We left the property having lost a lot of our life savings in the process, but still we did not want to give up as we picked up the pieces and continued to help the cats, kittens and our community members in need.

After 4 years of struggling to keep going we are coming to grips with the realities in the rescue world today and our ability to raise funds to keep our bricks and mortar location - we are now in jeopardy of losing this fight. As the main benefactors, we are now struggling along with most other people today. In order to keep using this property where the nursery is now running in the basement and was to be built on this land, we are selling off our last personal asset which is a rental house whose income helped to subsidize the nursery but the income from the sale will now serve as a partial down payment on Towerline Rd. But houses are not selling and even a large drop in the price is not helping. The most recent tenants are gone and the house sits empty as we wait for it to sell. Each day brings a new struggle as we try to maintain the quality of care our rescues deserve. We cannot keep the rental income property and afford to buy the Towerline Rd property as well. Expenses for vetting, food, supplies and housing are through the roof with no relief in sight. The current owner of the Towerline property is graciously letting us rent while waiting for us to sell the income property so we can buy this property. We cannot dwell on all we have lost as we know we are not the only ones struggling. But we have an obligation to the animals that so desperately need our help and we cannot bear to let them down.

Please find it in your heart to help save this nursery as without it many pregnant cats and orphaned kittens will be out in the cold along with the other horrible conditions that await them outside. Without this funding we will have to drastically reduce the amount of help we can offer to the community as we will no longer be able to take in sick cats and kittens and will have to find fosters for all animals currently in our care if that is even possible in today's environment. The bricks and mortar nursery in the basement will be shut down as we will no longer be able to maintain it.

We are also struggling to get enough volunteers to clean and provide special care for the kittens and cats in the nursery. Having a veterinary technician would help us to keep veterinary cost down and allow us to focus on the fundraising and administrative work required to raise money to care for these cats and kittens. This will be our only non-government funded position as we do get some summer youths hired through the Youth Summer Jobs Program to help out during the really busy kittens season throughout the summer months. The rest of the year we are a 100% volunteer run organization and without the government funding we would not be able to hire these students to help out at all.

This year we are struggling even more due to several new and ongoing factors such as:

1. There has been no relief from kitten season. The warm weather has increased the rates of pregnancies and we are still intaking pregnant cats and orphaned babies in November.

2. We are receiving less government help while our bills keep on getting bigger.

3. Donors are drying up as people do not have the spare money to give due to inflation that is out of control.

4. There has been a large upswing in cats and kittens with deadly viruses like Feline Immunity Virus (FIV) and Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) in our area. We have never experienced this before and the cost to save these little lives is expensive as they require special supplements and medicines to help them stay healthy. We must keep them for 6 months when they can be retested. This is about 4 months more than normal. There is no guarantee they will make or fight it off. But we must try. Spay and neuter is the only way.

5. Volunteers are scarce and we need people with special skills to help care for neonatal orphans.

Funding Required

The funds raised will first be used to make lease payments for the rental of the basement and to help pay the utilities being used. The lease will be less than market value but just enough to help pay the rental cost of the lease which is $3,000 monthly plus utilities. Lease payments for the nursery will be $2,000 inclusive (the nursery makes up approximately 75% of the utility bills) for the first 12 months. This charge will be board reviewed in December of 2025. $2k x 6 months x 2 = $24,000 funding needed.

Residual funds (should there be any) will go to hire a registered Vet tech (RVT) to help keep the nursery running and train our volunteers to care for the kittens and cats. $25/hr x 35 hours per week x 26 weeks = $22,750 for one year. This does not include government benefit expenses.

Total funding for one year to cover wages for 1 vet tech and rent for the basement for 2025.

Rental Cost for Brick and Mortar Location $24,000

Hiring Costs for RVT $27,750

Total Bare Minimum Costs for one year $46,750

These are not our only expenses as you can well imagine but covering these expenses will help us to continue this important work. We see the faces and the suffering and cannot walk away or close our eyes. I will give my last dollar and my last breath to these innocent creatures. I know I am not alone but the struggles are very lonely.

You can keep us alive by donating today to our Tiny Paws Fund at the Woodstock Kitten Nursery & Rescue.