Mews News: Thank You For Being a Friend

By now, you’ve likely heard of the Betty White Challenge — a viral fundraising effort to honor the legacy of Betty White, who was a lifelong animal lover and outspoken advocate for animal welfare. On January 17th, which would have been her 100th birthday, fans were encouraged to donate to animal shelters and rescue groups in her name. We are so grateful to our supporters, who donated over $5,000 to Nine Lives Foundation as part of the Betty White Challenge. If you didn’t get a chance to donate, you can do so with our gratitude via our PayPal or Network For Good donation sites.

Take Me Home Tonight!

Last week we welcomed the feline Betty White, a beautiful ten-year-old kitty who was surrendered to Nine Lives after her owner became too ill to care for her. Betty White is sweet and gentle, enjoys chin scratches and mouse toys, and would love nothing more than to keep your lap warm.

Can you give this golden girl a loving home to spend her golden years? Come by our Adoption Center this week and meet her!

Liam’s Corner

First, I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone in the Nine Lives community. During a year of considerable change and uncertainty, your steadfast support allowed us to stay focused on our mission to save as many cats as possible. Before continuing to look forward to 2022, let’s celebrate the successes of the past year. We performed a whopping 3,336 spay and neuter surgeries! Providing low-cost spay and neuter surgeries is one of our main tenets — it reduces the overpopulation of homeless cats in our community, and is the key to ending the senseless suffering and euthanasia of so many cats and kittens each year. We are grateful that our amazing veterinarians allow us to provide this desperately-needed service to the Bay Area community. Our wonderful veterinary team also administered thousands of low-cost vaccines to local cats and kittens at our weekly vaccination clinic, enabling them to have healthy pros-purrr-ous lives for years to come. We placed 480 cats into loving forever homes! Every cat that comes to Nine Lives is examined and provided with a variety of much-needed medical care, from vaccinations and dental extractions to live-saving surgery. Once our kitties are healthy and ready for adoption, our onsite adoption counselors match them with their perfect forever families. Our amazing volunteers donated over 4,500 hours of their time! Our hard-working volunteers are a driving force behind Nine Lives Foundation, and without their efforts, we would not be able to give so many kitties the care they deserve. We are so proud of the variety of talents they bring to our organization. Volunteers provide cat care and socialization, adoption counseling, fundraising support, day-to-day operational management of our facilities, and more! We established fantastic partnerships!

Since joining Nine Lives Foundation, I’ve made it my goal to build and foster (pun intended) relationships with neighboring rescue organizations — particularly under-resourced, overwhelmed, and underserved shelters — so that we can rescue and re-home as many cats as possible.

Picking up kitties from Tracy Animal Shelter earlier this month.

In the last few months alone, we’ve established fantastic relationships with Oakland Animal Services, Stockton Animal Shelter, Tracy Animal Shelter, Santa Cruz County Animal Shelter, Animal Rescue Relief, San Jose Animal Care and Control, and Los Banos Animal Shelter.

Animal rescue takes a village, and we are happy to join the ranks of these amazing shelters as a trusted resource for helping cats in our community. Let’s look forward to another fantastic year. This year, we strive to increase our spay and neuter services, increase our rescue efforts, and further expand and strengthen our rescue network. In order to provide care to more in-need cats and kittens, we are always looking for new dedicated volunteers. If you are interested in joining the good fight, please follow this link to apply! In addition to volunteers, we would also love to increase our foster network so that we are able to keep more cats off the streets, out of shelters, and on their way to recovery. If you are interested in fostering for Nine Lives, please fill out our Foster Application. Once again, we thank you for all that you do! Let’s continue to save lives together. Liam Montgomery Executive Director, Nine Lives Foundation

Extended Adoption Hours

We extended our adoption hours! The Adoption Center is now open every Thursday through Sunday from 12:00 to 6:00 pm. Please know that we are monitoring the situation with COVID-19 and will continue to follow all guidelines from the San Mateo County Health department. We are implementing temperature checks at entry and asking all staff, volunteers, and visitors to self-certify that they are not experiencing any symptoms of COVID-19 and have not had direct contact with any confirmed cases of COVID-19. Additionally, although we are not requiring appointments at this time, we are limiting capacity inside the Adoption Center. If/when we reach capacity we will ask parties to wait outside until space opens up. We hope that our extended hours will allow everyone hoping to find a furry friend the time and space to do so, safely.