Welcome to a brand new year, full of new hope, and a new outlook for Craig Street Cats. We start this year with a clean slate and hope for a brighter future for the community cats of Winnipeg.
Starting this year, CSC is moving away from the founder funded model we have relied on for the past 13 years. Up until now, we have raised as much money as we could through donors and events, and I have made up the difference by loaning the cats money. This started out quite innocently, with the refinancing of my house back in 2008, and continued with dribs and drabs from savings, investments and credit cards. Over the years, the total has risen to a rather startling $500,000.
This year, the cats start on a brand new track. Our Board of Directors has planned a way forward, that does not include extra financing from me. We have gone back to our roots as a community cat program. Our major focus will be trap, neuter, return and community cat management. This will mean reducing the number of cats on-site to between 100 and 150 at any given time, and reserving each of those spaces for cats in our programs. Getting there won't be easy, but we will get there by:
- expanding our kitten foster program
- creating a new fear free foster program, for poorly socialized cats
- focus on our colony manager program
- expanding our community trapper program
- not allowing ourselves to be guilted into accepting surrender of cats that do not qualify for our programs
Reducing the number of cats on-site will help cut costs, and free up quite a bit of space. That space will be used to earn income by boarding cats.
Of course, this all sounds wonderful. Getting there, however, might be a little unpleasant. "No" has become our favourite word, and not everyone is happy to hear it. One of our biggest intake challenges seems to be convincing other rescue organizations that we cannot accept surrender of owned pets or random stray cats. Many of them are still telling people to call us for help. This is an issue we will continue to work on.
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Yes, you read right. We are using some of our freed up space to board owned cats. In fact, phase one of our boarding program is already under way, and our guests seem to be quite happy with the arrangement. Full details on booking and costs are available on our website.
Our current maximum boarding capacity is 10 cats. Once fully implemented, that will grow to 25 to 30 cats.
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It's the sweetest time of the year! Cindy is busy baking up mountains of cupcakes and giant heart shaped cookies! As always, she has challenged us to scare her with the volume of your orders. She claims th
at last year's $8,000 worth of goodies didn't even make her break a sweat. What say we give her a run for her money, this year?
For those who have never had one of Cindy's cupcakes, they are just incredible. Chocolate or lemon cupcakes, filled with chocolate gnache, raspberry preserves, or lemon curd; and topped with butter cream icing. To die for.
Her giant cookies are truly gigantic, and the taste is as big as the cookies!
Get your orders in by February 5th. Pick up starts February 13th, at the adoption centre. Extras may be available at time of pick up, but why risk disappointment? Get your orders in early! Full details and order forms on our website.
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