Quadra Island Catr Rescue

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - In the twelve years since it was founded, the Quadra Island Cat Rescue has helped more than 1200 cats and kittens.

“We've helped them in many ways. First of all we try and find homes for as many cats and kittens that come into our care as possible. Of course, our mandate is to spay and neuter every cat that comes into our possession,” explained Valerie van Vleen. “That's why we're a charity and we're always raising funds to fund that.”

They also help out Quadra residents who cannot afford to spay or neuter their pet.

When there is an abundance of kittens, they drive them down to a trusted adoption agency in Victoria “where we know they're going to be properly, cared for spayed, neutered, and properly adopted.”

In addition, Quadra Island Cat Rescue maintains about five feral colonies on the island.

“All of those cats have been trapped and they spayed or neutered so that they are not hopefully reproducing anymore,” said Van Vleen. “So they will just live out their lives in the wild.”

She traced the origins of Quadra’s feral cats back to the wave of Europeans that started arriving in the 1880s.

“We began as a mining and fishing and lumber community, long before Campbell River existed, by the way,” she said. “All those camps usually had their barn cat or their logging camp cat to keep the mouse and rat population down.”

A former Granite Bay resident is said to have had close to a hundred feral cats.

There were a lot of cats running around the island in 2009, when Janet Massey put an add in the paper to see if anyone else was interested in trying to help these cats.

Van Vleen was one of the core of volunteers who responded.
“There's a small core of us who who had been working ever since to try and alleviate the cat problem on Quadra, “she explained.

They do not have a shelter and focus on finding people who will look after the cats.

There are many ways that a Quadra Island resident can out (or even someone from Read or Cortes Islands):

Both of Quadra Island’s True Value stores offer Spirit Points to customers. These are donations to specific causes and the Quadra Island Cat Rescues number is 280.
On a similar vein, Canadian Tire reward points can be turned into gift cards for Quadra Island Cat Rescue
Any unopened cat food can be donated to Quadra Island Cat Rescue.
If somebody wants to know where to donate, in cash or kind, they could phone our cat line 250-285-CATS (250-285-3387).

“Anybody who would be interested in looking after a cat or kitten for a period of time, or maybe even finding out whether this is the cat or kitten that they want to give a forever home to, then we have fostering and of course adopting. We are very careful about adopting out our cats. We want to make sure that, of course they are going to be treated well, and that they will be continually cared for. So we have an adoption form that is on our website at Quadra.com that can be completed. And then once that is completed, then we can begin a process of trying to make a match for a forever home,” said Van Vleen.

“We are a registered charity. Please email if you wish to make a direct donation, email, [email protected] to find out more about making a direct donation.

Links to Quadra Cat Rescue
 www.quadracats.com 
·       email [email protected]
·       Quadra Cat Rescue Facebook page
·       call 250-285-CATS (2287)