6 Feb 2021

February Updates

by | posted in: Education, Fostering, Fundraising | 0

Things seem to be off to a good start for 2021. Storm and Cloud have been adopted, and we’re working to get Hurricane and Rain into their forever homes. Maybe even together, if we can! We’ve toured four retail spaces with feelers out for a couple more. One in particular would be great as long as the money is there month in and month out to pay the bills. It’s spacious and light and purrfect for a cat lounge. Wish we had a crystal ball to tell us what our future holds! We have faith that we’ll get the right place at the right time, that visitors and adopters will come, and that the support we need will be there! Once we’ve been open we should be able to pursue grants, too.

We set a goal to raise $1000/month through in-kind and financial donations and so far things are going well there. We’ve had fabric donated which has been terrific. A fat quarter usually makes 4 masks. Depending on the print, we can get upwards of 16 masks from a full yard of fabric. We’re looking at new fabrics to line the masks with and the possibility of adding a filter pocket.

We’ve sold a few pouches already and have a pattern we like now for a smaller pouch. Just need to get some sewn up! If the weather continues to be sunny, and if COVID-19 cases continue to drop, we may hold another pop-up shop in the next month or so.

In the near future we will be adding some education pages to the website, things like what to expect when you bring a new cat home, how to introduce animals, what’s normal for kitten behavior, etc. if you have suggestions for other topics we’d love to hear them!

As always, thank you for your support. Without supporters we wouldn’t be able to pursue this dream of helping more cats find safe, loving, permanent homes. 💗

1 Jan 2021

January 1, 2021

by | posted in: Education | 0

Here we are at the start of a new year. This time last year we were putting the finishing touches on all of our documents so that we could file as a corporation and then apply for tax-exempt status. We started a Facebook page in February but didn’t promote it right away, as we wanted to be sure our nonprofit status would be approved. We opened our bank account at the end of March (thank you to Carmen at Bank of the Sierra for making that happen when the shut-down was brand-new and businesses were reeling!). Since then we’ve raised money, researched retail spaces, made new friends, and reached more supporters both locally and across the country.

We’re starting the new year feeling supported and encouraged. We can see that the idea of a cat lounge and adoption center in Ventura appeals to people, as does the mission of saving more cats and kittens. One of our big goals, once we have the lounge open, is to expand our network of volunteers, train fosters as needed, and involve more of our community in our efforts.

As we begin 2021 I wanted to record a few numbers, as I think it’s good to be able to look back and see progress. Eventually, we’ll be able to track cat adoptions!!! We’ve raised nearly $12,000. We have 412 Facebook followers and 394 Instagram followers. In 2020 we fostered 19 cats and kittens. Of those, 4 are still here in foster and 1 is still waiting to be adopted (Sequoia, now known as Teba, at Greyfoot). We’ll continue to raise money with handmade items like masks, toys, and note cards, and we’re adding zipper pouches to the store later this month too! Once the lounge is open we envision having those things for sale as well as t-shirts and other items. If you haven’t seen our Bonfire t-shirts and sweatshirts, take a look!

If you’d like to get more involved this year I encourage you to fill out a volunteer application. I’d also suggest following us on Facebook or Instagram to keep up with our activities. Once there’s more to report we’ll send out regular newsletter updates as well. Once we have a place leased we’ll share an online registry where supporters can shop for gifts like toys, beds, food, and more for the future cats!

2021 will be our year!

3 Dec 2020

December Updates

by | posted in: Education, Fostering, Fundraising | 0

It’s kind of hard to believe the final month of 2020 is here. I know January of 2021 won’t magically be all better but I have hope that overall, 2021 will be better than 2020!

Some updates to the data I like to track:

  1. We’ve had 70 people (that we know of!) support us through financial donations, participating in fundraisers, and/or in-kind donations.
  2. We started with seed money of $130 the day we opened our bank account and now have about $5400 in there.
  3. We’ve sold at least 125 masks since August.
  4. We have over 350 Facebook followers and over 350 Instagram followers.
  5. We’ve fostered 19 cats and kittens.
  6. We’ve had 3 newspaper interviews.
  7. We’ve spoken to 1 volunteer mentor from SCORE and 1 commercial real estate broker for advice as we move forward.

So what’s to come? We’re making a big push to raise $3000 by the end of the year. Donations to Cassie’s Cats are tax-deductible so we hope our supporters will consider that as they make end-of-year donations. We need our mission to be shared with others in Ventura and the surrounding communities as well as further out, to anyone who shares our values and wants to see cats and kittens finding their “fur”ever homes! Rent in midtown Ventura is not cheap but we want to be visible and attract as many visitors and potential adopters as we can.

Ways to donate:

  1. Use the yellow PayPal button at the bottom of any page
  2. Mail a check (use the contact form for our current mailing address)
  3. Send us a donation through Venmo (Jennifer-Thompson-75)
  4. Make a purchase in our fundraising shop

As always, thank you for your continued support as we work to make this dream a reality!

27 Nov 2020

Feeling Thankful

by | posted in: Education, Fostering, Fundraising | 0

It’s the day after Thanksgiving and I wanted to take a few moments to say thank you. Storm is doing well, eating a lot, recovering from her surgery, and looking after her babies. Rain, Cloud, and Hurricane are one-week old today and doing fantastic. They’re gaining weight just as they should be and look like healthy, roly-poly kittens. I’m grateful for that. I’ve been posting photos on Instagram and Facebook.

Our fundraiser last weekend went really well and brought in almost $400. There are lots of new masks out in the community now and several kitties got new toys to play with. Two former fosters even got the two crocheted cat beds! My daughter is home now (and is also a board member) so together we may do one more pop-up for a couple of hours on December 12th. Stay tuned for details about that. Chris Frost wrote up a nice article about us and the event, too.

We’ve been pushing to bring our total fundraising up to $10,000 by year’s end so that we’re more than ready to launch our retail space as soon as it’s safe to do so. As of today, we have a little over $5500 in the bank and in cash and another $1650 promised to us. We’re hoping that one donor’s $1000 donation will be matched by their employer. All said, that would bring us to about $8000! That is so amazing and we are humbled and inspired by the support and generosity shown by our community.

Thank you for supporting us, for following us, and for helping our dream come true. We can’t wait to open our space and start helping more cats find their furever homes!

4 Nov 2020

November Updates

by | posted in: Education, Fundraising | 0

This time last year we were ready to start forming the nonprofit but hadn’t even started a draft of our bylaws, an essential first step. We weren’t approved as a legitimate 501(c)3 nonprofit organization until March of this year (with approval dating back to early January). Here we are now in November, and we have come a long way for a very new nonprofit organization trying to fundraise during a worldwide pandemic and various stages of a state shutdown here in California!

A few encouraging statistics:

  1. We’ve had 64 people (that we know of!) support us through financial donations, participating in fundraisers, and/or in-kind donations.
  2. We started with seed money of $130 the day we opened our bank account and now have about $3600 in there.
  3. We’ve sold at least 94 masks since August.
  4. We have over 300 Facebook followers and over 330 Instagram followers.
  5. We’ve fostered 15 cats and kittens.
  6. We’ve had 2 newspaper interviews.
  7. We’ve spoken to 1 volunteer mentor from SCORE and 1 commercial real estate broker for advice as we move forward.

So what’s to come? We’d like to make a big push and raise $3000 between now and the end of the year. Donations to Cassie’s Cats are tax-deductible so we hope our supporters will consider that as they make end-of-year donations. We need our mission to be shared with others in Ventura and the surrounding communities as well as further out, to anyone who shares our values and wants to see cats and kittens finding their “fur”ever homes! Rent in midtown Ventura is not cheap but we want to be visible and attract as many visitors and potential adopters as we can.

Ways to donate:

  1. Use the yellow PayPal button at the bottom of any page
  2. Mail a check (use the contact form for our current mailing address)
  3. Send us a donation through Venmo (Jennifer-Thompson-75)
  4. Make a purchase in our fundraising shop

As always, thank you for your continued support as we work to make this dream a reality!