Mission Statement
Cat’s Cradle’s mission is to ensure and maintain a safe, compassionate community for cats and dogs.

Programs
Our service area includes the following four counties in Virginia: Augusta, Page, Rockingham, and Shenandoah. We provide:

·  Spay/Neuter assistance for low-income citizens (cats and dogs)

·  TNR (Trap, Neuter Return) assistance for feral cat colony care-takers

·  Foster and adoption (cats only)

·  Pet retention and rehoming assistance

Scope & Transparency
We invite you to learn more about us as we strive to meet the mission.  We are listed in Guidestar. You may view our IRS Tax Form 990 if you wish.  And you can check on our animal intake and outgo at the VA Dept. of Agriculture.

Beliefs and Principles
Sheltered animals have a right to live.

Feral cats have a right to their lives

Major shelters in each community have the obligation to create and ensure a safe community for animals.

Citizens have a right to full disclosure about how animal shelters and animal welfare organizations operate, including accurate and timely information about the number of animals killed.

Ten Life-saving Best Practices
The following practices made San Francisco CA, Tompkins County NY, and Charlottesville VA some of the safest communities for animals in the US. Communities across the country are implementing these programs and making dramatic progress in number of lives saved. Cat’s Cradle believes it is time for our community to follow their example.

Historical Perspective
The leading cause of death in cats and dogs in the U.S. is “euthanasia” in animal shelters. In the mid 20^th century, this was perhaps necessary. The animal population had exploded out of control, and the cultural expectation was that animals not humanely put down in shelters were likely to meet a crueler fate starving in the streets or being drowned as litters in local streams.

In the early 1980’s spay/neuter took hold. Over the ensuing twenty years, the U.S. saw deaths in animal shelters drop from 17 million a year to 5-7 million.

In the 1990’s the San Francisco SPCA put in place ground-breaking innovations that brought the shelter animal death rate in that city down to 5%, versus over 50% nation-wide. Since then, these same techniques have been taking hold in other communities, with dramatic results. The model has now been duplicated on the West Coast, the East Coast, the North, the South, urban areas and rural areas. As of 2006, the number of shelter deaths across the country is thought have come down further, to about 4.5 million per year.

In Virginia, two communities have put in place these new strategies – Richmond and Charlottesville. Richmond has achieved city-wide safety for healthy, adoptable cats and dogs, and is working on doing the same for treatable and rehabilitatable animals and feral cats. Charlottesville currently has the best record in the country, saving all healthy/adoptable animals, nearly all treatable/rehabilitatable animals, and nearly all feral cats.

These innovative life-saving techniques consist of a straight-forward program available free to anyone. Shelters who have achieved these remarkable results are eager to share their best practices with other shelters so more lives can be saved.

The sheltering community across the country is divided roughly into three camps – the people who are eager to embrace the new techniques, the people who don’t yet know about them, and the people who are unwilling to make the necessary changes.

Cat’s Cradle believes it is time for the Shenandoah Valley to actively pursue these techniques in order to become a safe community for cats and dogs.

Cat’s Cradle’s History
Cat's Cradle was founded in 1998 by Pat Rossi, a woman determined to provide no-kill alternatives for stray cats. Her idea was simple, but powerful. She worked with a few generous local veterinarians to provide reduced price sterilization and vaccines to anyone who had found a stray cat and was willing to keep it.

It wasn’t long before the organization found itself fostering some cats and kittens and finding homes for them. Word of a no-kill organization spread quickly. People began flocking to Cat's Cradle when they had cats they had to give up, or had batches of unwanted kittens.

While rescue and adoption were not the main focus, the organization responded to the need. Cat's Cradle volunteers became adept at rescuing neglected and abandoned cats and kittens, getting them the veterinary care they needed, and finding homes for them through outlets like PETCO and PETsMART, as well as through the Internet.

Rescuing cats, however, was not stemming the tide. Despite Cat's Cradle's considerable contribution in foster and adoption, just as many cats were being put down in local shelters for lack of homes. Furthermore, colonies of free-roaming cats, most of which are feral and unadoptable, were being put down en masse when merchants or citizens called Animal Control with complaints. Intake at our local shelters was increasing each year.

In 2001, Cat's Cradle board members devoted two days to defining our vision for the Shenandoah Valley. We realized we needed to focus on spay/neuter and Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR). It was the most effective way to address overpopulation, and no one else in the community was doing this.

Cat's Cradle volunteers began trapping colonies of cats, working with cat colony caretakers, and caring for some colonies on an on-going basis themselves.

Still, it wasn’t enough. A program using local veterinarians did not furnish enough appointments to bring down the population of unwanted cats. A local high-volume spay/neuter solution was needed.

While continuing to help the public directly, Cat's Cradle spearheaded the opening of a free-standing Spay/Neuter Clinic in Harrisonburg, VA, raising over $30,000 locally, and putting in much sweat equity. With a generous grant from the Bosack and Kruger Foundation, the Shenandoah Valley Spay Neuter Clinic was born. The Clinic offers low-cost sterilization for both cats and dogs, and has the capacity to perform over 10,000 surgeries a year.

In 2005, the Board of Cat’s Cradle added eliminating dog overpopulation in the Shenandoah Valley to its mission.  While we don’t do dog foster or adoption, we do help low-income citizens spay or neuter their dogs.

Cat's Cradle has grown considerably since 1998. Our dedicated volunteers are assisted by our staff Adoption Coordinator and a Spay/Neuter Coordinator. Although we have no facility to house animals, our network of foster homes achieves over 400 high-quality adoptions per year. Our spay/neuter and TNR teams assist the public with about 2,000 sterilizations per year and growing.

We WILL end pet overpopulation in Shenandoah Valley – we invite you to join in this exciting venture!