With regard to fulfilling its mission, Cali Cats Rescue is off to a good start at the nonprofit’s new Bethel Park location.
A friendly feline named Lollipop made such a good impression on Benjamin Franklin Elementary School student Mason Stratthaus and his mom, Krystal, that they decided to pursue adoption.
They met Lollipop during an April 9 “soft” open house in Unit C1 at 2776 South Park Road, the new base for the volunteer-run nonprofit.
And of course, cats seeking permanent families will be the special guests.
Since its founding five years ago by Amanda Jeney, Cali Cats – the name comes from her hometown of California Borough, Washington County – primarily has focused on placing felines with people who foster them, and that focus will continue, she said.
All cats that come through the rescue receive appropriate veterinary care, spaying or neutering, vaccinations and preventative treatments.
For the open house, Jeney conducted tours of the new facility, which includes a front office, kitchen, storage areas and various rooms where cats can frolic and/or relax. In the back is an intake space, where visitors had the opportunity to meet Rocky, her almost 2-year-old American Bully.
“Rocky’s our cat tester, to make sure they’re good with dogs,” Jeney said.
The largest space in the facility is the community room, where the walls are decorated with a colorful mural completed by artist Max “GEMS” Gonzales just a few hours before the open house began. Among the plans for the room are educational programs, such as Jeney speaking about the trap-neuter-return method for humanely managing feral cat populations.
“It’s a great system, and it really, really helps the problem,” she said.
Cats can begin to breed at six months or slightly younger and produce an average of one-and-a-half litters of four kittens each annually, according to the National Feline Research Council, which gives a realistic estimate of two unsterilized cats and their offspring producing between 100 and 5,000 cats in seven years.
Jeney’s initial foray into fostering was of dogs, through Bridge to Home Animal Rescue of Washington County. A chance circumstance helped shift her attention to other four-legged friends.
“On my way home one day, I saw this furry thing on the side of the road,” she recalled. “I thought it was a dead or injured baby raccoon, so I got out to move it off the road. And it was three four-week-old kittens that were flea-infested, eyes all shut.”
She transported them to her garage and nursed them back to health. Then she took the cats back to where she found them and learned a woman who lived nearby “had 17 adult cats that she fed.”
“I looked online, talked to a couple of people, started trapping her cats, getting them fixed, paying out of pocket. I pulled 33 kittens out of her yard that summer,” Jeney said. “That project got finished, and it just kind of blew up and snowballed. And here we are, five years later.”
Eventually, she incorporated Cali Cats as a 501(c)3 organization, meaning that donations are tax-deductible. Serving on the board are Jeney as president; Bethel Park residents Erin Burlew and Maria Sherman as vice president and secretary, respectively; and treasurer Lorna Kestner, a fifth-grade teacher at Neil Armstrong Middle School, where she advises a club that participates in service projects.
“I decided to have the students collect for Cali Cats Rescue,” Kestner said. “From doing that, I started going to their events and volunteering to help out, and then Amanda asked me to be on the board.”
And an inky-colored cat from Cali now is a member of her family.
“His name when I adopted him was Weasel, which I quickly changed. And he’s now Ozzy,” she said, after Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee John “Ozzy” Osbourne. “He’s the Prince of Darkness, so that’s why I called him that.”