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Winter Appeal 2020: Double Your Impact

Our new tagline says exactly how we feel about our pets – and about the many cats and dogs still looking for their forever homes. Our love for them enhances the quality of our own lives. Our love for them extends through their entire life. And our love for them pushes us to help adoptable animals find the love they deserve and to prevent unnecessary euthanasia.

At the heart of this is spaying and neutering to address the root cause of overpopulation. Fixing animals humanely limits their numbers and makes our task achievable. Whether you are a pet owner, community cat caretaker, shelter or rescue group, spaying and neutering benefits us all.

Ray spent over a year in a shelter before finding a new home.

Did You Know?

Experts suggest writing fundraising letters at the 6th grade level. We write our own appeal letters, and we know our supporters are smart enough to comprehend some big words and life-saving concepts. So, let’s have a real conversation about cats and dogs.

At Pet Friendly Services of Indiana, our mission is to have every shelter become zero kill, with a “live release rate” of 90% or higher. Author and attorney, Peter Marsh, wrote a groundbreaking book titled, Getting to Zero.* His book outlines the steps to reach zero kill. In fact, his home state of New Hampshire was the first state to achieve zero-kill status by providing targeted spay/neuter services. We’re following his lead, and Indiana’s animals are benefiting!

Successes & Challenges

 

Thanks to you, shelters across the state have been reporting higher adoption and lower euthanasia rates because we are addressing the root cause of shelter overpopulation. Without spay/neuter, it is completely impossible to stop the euthanasia of healthy cats and dogs.

Of course, 2020 has hit animal welfare hard. Our greatest challenge this year has been Community Cats. The shutdown in March, with a slow reopening and limited vet appointments, gave cats time to breed

Saving Lives & Money

Did you know spay/neuter surgeries are amazingly cost effective compared to sheltering? Our average surgery cost is just $65, compared to sheltering animals at a cost of $176 to $450 per animal.

Did you know kittens can start breeding as early as 4 months of age? When cats reproduce at an early age, kittens are more likely to be sickly and need special veterinary care, in addition to a spay/neuter surgery. When there are too many cats, they are more likely to flood our shelters or be abandoned. This has been the case in 2020.

Your support has allowed Pet Friendly Services of Indiana to help 120 communitty cat programs across our state. Keep in mind that most of these organizations are all-volunteer. After their day jobs, they head out to trap-neuter-return feral and free-roaming cats. These are exactly the kind of volunteers we all wish to support with free spay/neuter certificates. Everybody loves the kindness of volunteers.

Fuzzy Faces We've Helped

Pet Friendly Services funded Tater's spay, so her rescue group was able to use their scarce resources for her parvo treatment.
Pet Friendly Services funded Tater's spay, so her rescue group was able to use their scarce resources for her parvo treatment.
Pet Friendly Services funded Tater's spay, so her rescue group was able to use their scarce resources for her parvo treatment.

What About Dogs?

Community Cat programs help dogs, too! When communities have trap-neuter-return programs for outdoor cats, shelters are able to spend their limited resources on adoptable animals. Dog adoptions increase when shelters are not overwhelmed with cats.

Pet Friendly Services of Indiana provides FREE surgery certificates to nearly 300 shelters and rescue groups to help spay/neuter cats and dogs before adoption. Rescue groups “pull” animals from shelters, foster them and find forever homes. With our assistance, our partner groups are able to move more animals out of shelters and into loving homes. Pull. Foster. Adopt. Repeat.

Help Us Help Them

By joining us, you are part of our life-saving team and a part of something larger than yourself. We all love our own pets with all our hearts AND we all want to help the pets who have not yet been adopted. While doing this, we are focusing on the root cause of pet overpopulation by spaying and neutering. This makes Indiana’s future brighter.

Please become a donor. We promise to put your dollars to work for the animals and achieve lasting results. Thanks to a group of generous supporters, your donations will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $25,000! Double the number of animals helped when you give today! Together, we can and will make Indiana a zero-kill state.

Cheri Storms

Executive Director

Rhi Johns

Marketing Manager

Jessica Phillips

Data & Client Coordinator