Stray and feral felines find an angel rescuer in Westfir

My name is Jayce, and I have been a resident of Westfir for three years now. My husband Shawn and I quickly realized after moving here that there was a huge feral cat and kitten problem. *

I would drive home and there would just be dozens of cats and kittens on the road in Hemlock, the section of Westfir where we live. They seemed to be everywhere. At one point, I think there were more cats than people living in this small community.

A few weeks after moving here I came home from work to find a tiny kitten. My daughter and her friend had found it in a puddle at the park and she had brought it home. I wasn’t sure it was going to live through the night. It had a serious eye infection and was completely infested with fleas and ear mites. My husband told us we could not keep it, and it would only be staying with us for one night until we figured out what to do with it. That is when we realized there aren’t any resources within the Westfir/Oakridge area.

Shawn spent the entire next day calling every animal shelter he could find on the internet. Everyone was full and no one wanted to take in a sick kitten that needed to be bottle fed.  That one night turned into us keeping the kitten indefinitely …we now have 8 cats!

We had saved that one kitten but what about the rest? There were still so many cats and kittens in our neighborhood who were feral*.  We spoke to some of the neighbors and got the contact information for Deb McNamara, a resident of Oakridge who has been helping cats for decades. It was she that got us into live-trapping and fostering kittens. She has been a tremendous resource to us for the past 3 years and has taught us a lot.

We spoke to Mayor D’ylnn Williams about the feral cat problem and unfortunately there was just no one doing anything about it. I got consent to live-trap and that started our journey into cat rescue. Last year we trapped 48 cats and kittens just in the Hemlock neighborhood. Some were TNR (Trap and Release) and we continued to feed them in front of our residence and many of them we were able to rehabilitate and socialize enough to get adopted into loving homes.

One of the people who came to adopt from us last year was an Oakridge resident by the name of Raven.  Once she saw how many kittens, we had she decided she wanted to help so she started a GoFundMe account to collect donations. It was posted on the Oakridge chat forum, and we received several hundred dollars including $200 from Westfir’s Mayor Williams to help us. It was incredible but unfortunately, we were still using money out of our pocket as well.

This year I continue to see lots of posts in Oakridge regarding stray cats, feral cats, and even a post from a woman who found an injured kitten that someone had thrown out of a car window on Hwy 58.  Because there are no rescue resources in our area for Oakridge and Westfir, I would like to be able to take in all cats and kittens needing a home as well as help residents trap feral colonies and get them fixed. To do this I am going to need some help from the public. I have started a GoFundMe page for donations at https://gofund.me/75c1ce82  as well as an Amazon gift registry.

If you would like to help, you can use the search bar and look under registry and gifting and type in Jayce A, “Event Type” is pet gift list.  All donations will be greatly appreciated and will go to the care of all the cats and kittens I take in.

You can also reach out to me via email with any questions or if you are needing help with cats at [email protected]

I hope to be writing a monthly column in the Highway 58 Herald with updates about the cats and kittens we have in our care. I am in the process of forming a 501c(3) nonprofit to advance our rescue work.  Please follow along on our cat journey with us!

Jayce

* Feral cats are domestic cats that live outdoors and avoid human contact. They are also known as stray cats.  They are unsocialized and tend to be fearful of people.  They are the offspring of stray or abandoned pets that are not spayed or neutered.  Without early human contact, their kittens become feral and continue the cycle of reproduction.

Jayce Anderson trained as a vet tech in Arizona.  She recently moved to Westfir with her family and is actively engaged in cat rescue.  Her GoFundMe is:   https://gofund.me/75c1ce82