Catnip Casa Cat Refuge

Catnip Casa Cat Refuge provides care to cats that require extensive rehab or life care due to age, disease, or disabilities that do not allow them to remain in their home or community. These cats are unadoptable in most shelters, or in the case of community cats, unable to function in their natural environment. The cats we accept have the potential to live well with specialized care. We strive to keep their environment as safe and normal as possible while addressing their unique needs, including rehabilitation and caregiver training and support to adopt them into loving homes whenever possible. In addition, we are developing a foster home and foster-to-adopt program to offer additional support for families who are willing to adopt or care for cats with special needs.

In 2023 and forward, Catnip Casa's will provide resources for respite care through partners, volunteers, and funding. Our emphasis in 2023 is on continuing our mission for senior and special needs cats while adding TNR resources and education to the community to work toward reducing the number of community cats in crisis due to the pandemic and the lack of resources for caregivers over the past three years.

We educate owners, caregivers, professionals, and the public, about caring for cats with challenges caused by age, disease, disabilities, or terminal illness. Our website, social media, and community events, provide materials and personal contact to get information out to the community.

Whenever possible, we increase our presence in local businesses with brochures and donation boxes. We also participate in community events as a way to meet individuals in the community and increase awareness. For the past seven years, we participated in Amplify Austin too.

The cats we rescue are adopted into appropriate homes whenever possible, with ongoing support for the life of the cat--that may be through coaching, free boarding, financial assistance, or all of these.

We also strive to constantly increase our network of persons, services, foster homes, and resources, that benefit the community by keeping senior and special needs cats out of shelters and providing respite care for cats and dogs.

Our donors and donation boxes, along with local events, support the cats, pet respite care, and TNR. Since 2018, we have increased our focus on building an emergency community assistance fund for crisis situations that come to us for help.

We mentor trappers and actively support TNR (trap/neuter/release) for community cats.

We are successfully growing our list of volunteers and donors. Our social media also has a growing audience spreading the word about our work. Local businesses support is also growing.

In addition, we received six grants during our first three and a half years and continue to solicit additional funding opportunities. We participated in Amplify Austin in for the past seven years, which greatly increased our exposure and credibility, along with bringing us a number of new supporters.

Our donor support and corporate support continue to grow as we build community awareness. We are a very small organization. Yet, we survived the challenges of losing funding and volunteers to several major disasters during the past years. Catnip Casa Cat Refuge is proud to be able to maintain our transparency and our status despite the challenges.

Catnip Casa has acquired more stable repeat donors and business support. Donations in-kind are also increasing with more community awareness. Businesses are coming asking us to be their featured charity for an event or charity of the month. Our grant solicitations are receiving positive responses.

There is still a need for more community awareness through in-person contact and media support. We continue to work on addressing that need and developing more creative ways to respond in view of the continued risks presented by Covid and other viruses. This is important because the majority of our donors and volunteers tend to be older. It's also important because the working environment is foster-home-based. We are reaching out through social media for a more diverse pool of supporters with some success.

Catnip Casa is very pleased with our progress and has solid plans for the areas that need to grow.