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Ellen, Benny, and Catego have joined together to help homeless kittens.
I heard about NOVA Cat Clinic in the newspaper. And I remember going through the classified ads and seeing this cat hospital looking for a technician. And it was just a big circle on the page. It came down to the wire of, “Wow. My God, this cat hospital is so amazing. They love the cats. It’s quiet.” They genuinely knew what they were talking about. It wasn’t just preventative medicine. They have a great doctor to staff to patient ratio. And you’re around cats all day. And I was like, “I want to work with these cats and I have not heard back from them.” And I remember picking up the phone and calling them up and going, “Do you want me or not?” They were like, “Yes. We want you. Come aboard.” And so I’ve been here since 2002 as the only licensed veterinary technician. But it’s not always just petting and snuggling. A lot of our patients are very ill. We can have anywhere from 3 to 5 medical procedures to over 20 appointments in any given day. And having multiple doctors in the feline-only practice only makes us a lot busier. The Chris Griffey Memorial Feline Foundation is very near and dear to our hearts. It is named after one of our previous assistants that worked with us for over 10 years who committed suicide. The clients loved Chris. He was always asked for as one of the assistants in the room, so he made a really big impact. So we wanted to continue that impact.Neonates are no different than your other standard patient; that they deserve the medical care that they require. That medical care is absolutely possible. You just need to be trained more properly. You need to have the staff that is really into the intensive care, the volunteer work, and time that really goes into taking care of these babies. A lot of time the rescue groups and shelters don’t have the money or resources to put into the intense medical care that some of these little guys need. But when you have a rescue group or a shelter worker coming to you saying, “We need help with this kitten. Can you help us?” Well, we make that impossible possible. And we’re talking about 100 at-risk, less than 3-week-old kittens we are hand-raising from that point on. Last year alone, we did 44 very, high-risk kittens that required multiple surgeries to get better, with a 4% mortality rate, which is incredible. Donations are wonderful. If people want to help the Chris Griffey Memorial Feline Foundation, they can simply log on to novacatclinic.com and click on client resources. We also have our own Facebook page for the Chris Griffey Memorial Feline Foundation. And you can also follow NOVA Cat Clinic on their Instagram page.