Buy a Koshling handmade cat toy - proceeds go to our Boarding Fund!

| Cute toys for kitty that help Love Kuching kitties! |

Koshling Toys has decided to put their cat toys towards making lives better for more kitties! With every Koshling Toy purchased, $3 of the retail price goes to our Boarding Fund. 

Really, can the cats ever have enough toys? They always get bored with existing ones or kick them into odd corners of the house you can't reach! More is more!

Here are some of the Koshling Toy designs available. You can opt to have them made as pure plushies, or weighted with beans within for extra play variety. Visit the Koshling Toys' page for even more toy designs.

Rabbits, available in a large array of colours

Rabbits, dressed up

Flower hanging toy

Heart hanging toy, front

Back, any initial you request for

And here are some of Koshling Toys' satisfied customers

"I has my own teddy rabbit toy!"

"Don't take my Koshling from me!"

"My humans REALLY REALLY love me."

How you can purchase Koshling Toys that will benefit our Boarding Fund:

Go to the Koshlings Toys' Facebook Page.

Either leave a message on their wall or message them to ask about prices and customisations you would like e.g. the colours, initials, with or without beans. You can then also find out about modes of payment, and the Koshlings will be mailed to you.

Thank you for making your cat happy with a Koshling, and benefiting our foster cats' as you do so!

Give financially to our cause by depositing to our bank account POSB savings 188-52652-7    
Sponsor a foster kitten's vaccination through our Sponsor-A-LoveKuching-Cat Scheme  
Give food and litter at charity rates through our corporate sponsor The Water Dish 

Jaimie got adopted on Sunday!

Jaimie getting affection from his new daddy, Alex

Mommy Leila asking Jaimie to look at camera!

Leila and Alex are on long-term working contracts in Singapore, originally from the UK. Both of them grew up with cats. After passing our criteria they came to visit and immediately bonded with all the kittens! But they had made the decision beforehand to adopt only one first, and Daddy Alex was keen on a boy.

Turns out, after Jaimie settled down in his new home, he sat beside his daddy and watched soccer on the telly together!

We are really happy for this family! Thank you Leila and Alex for your financial contribution above your adoption fee for Jaimie too! 

Give financially to our cause by depositing to our bank account POSB savings 188-52652-7    
Sponsor a foster kitten's vaccination through our Sponsor-A-LoveKuching-Cat Scheme    
Give food and litter at charity rates through our corporate sponsor The Water Dish 

2012: About our fundraising, i.e. heralding of cat-angels!

We continue our 2012 series of posts into February! Here are the 2 previous ones we have shared: boarding rescued kitties, expanding cat care education avenues.

Remember the matrix?

We are going to talk about Love Kuching's fundraising.

In both years of 2010 and 2011, our biggest source of income via fundraising is through direct financial contributions from the public, from whom we call our cat-angels.

This method of fundraising has cost us very little, and in itself, does not make an impact for cat welfare until it is channelled into good use in our Boarding, Sterilisation, Veterinary and Operations Funds. This makes fundraising our Dollar Sign quadrant activity. Because it yields so much in proportion to the amount spent on it, we are going to improve the excellence in our fundraising much more.


Here are the changes:

Donor Care
We have managed to recruit an excellent Donor Care Volunteer, Rosanna! We want to connect with our cat-angels even more than before. We have a lot of cat-angels - very blessed! - and we want to make sure we stay in touch with them to let them know their investments have yielded.

Stray Cat Fund
We would like to introduce another volunteer with portfolio, our Stray Cat Volunteer, Melissa. We have been successful in raising funds and resources to sustain our work and we want to extend this to an area in cat rescue that tends to fall between the cracks. Our Veterinary Fund is used for cats that are in our fostering custody only, and strays who get abused, injured, or fall ill are unreached. The main channel injured strays have is through Cat Welfare Society's Special Appeals. What we hope to achieve is two-pronged. Highlight cases on Special Appeals so as to multiply the awareness and get Love Kuching's cat-angels engaged in these cases. Secondly, in the course of our work should we meet any stray cats in need of veterinary attention, we are going to tap on a Stray Cat Fund to help them. We are launching this Stray Cat Fund at zero dollar for the moment. Our dream is that in the future rescuers who are unable to come up with the initial payment of the veterinary treatment of stray cats, we are able to disburse the funds to them through our Stray Cat Fund. Big dream eh? Willing to embark with us on this journey?

Merchandise Partnerships
In nonprofit fundraising, merchandise sales is always a mainstay. However, for us, it yields very little in income based on the figures from 2010 and 2011. This means that merchandise sales is a Stop sign in the matrix map above. We are changing tack and now working with merchandise partners instead. So far we already have done so with two partners and a third has also come forward. We will be focusing on prospecting for such merchandise partnerships instead of trying to boost the array of our own stock of merchandise, as this is the smart strategic move. The income received from merchandise sales by these partners will be registered as donations and no longer as profit from sales.

Improvement in Outreach
So far, all our cat-angels have come to know about us through online platforms - our website, blog, twitter, facebook. We want to expand the mediums by which we reach out to more cat-angels in the making. This means expanding into events, print media, and tapping on groups of pet lovers in Singapore that are still unaware of our work.


All these endeavours sound like a lot, but we want to raise the bar continually in making a difference for cat welfare in Singapore. Join us on our journey!

Questions? Email Elaine at elaine@lovekuchingproject.org.

Give financially to our cause by depositing to our bank account POSB savings 188-52652-7
Sponsor a foster kitten's vaccination through our Sponsor-A-LoveKuching-Cat Scheme    
Give food and litter at charity rates through our corporate sponsor The Water Dish 

We are 'hiring'! Recruitment of another Volunteer with Portfolio

We are looking for a Donor Care Volunteer.

Apart from loving cats and loving to give back to help them have better lives, you would also be someone who loves humans who loves cats!

What you would need to do is to help us complete and constantly update our Donor Database. Also, help us send out tokens of appreciation via mail. These tokens can be made by yourself if you are into design and crafts, or we can get our Communications Volunteer Sarah get them done, so you just need to do the mailing. You would also help us keep the thank yous going through email to our cat-angels.

How often and when during the week or month this work needs to be done is on your own schedule. We believe that our volunteers should not only work to their strengths and in their interests, but also according to their schedule of life, work, family.

If you think you are this person, do drop Elaine an email elaine@lovekuchingproject.org. We are waiting for you. You are the last Volunteer with Portfolio for 2012 we haven't met yet!

Give financially to our cause by depositing to our bank account POSB savings 188-52652-7    
Sponsor a foster kitten's vaccination through our Sponsor-A-LoveKuching-Cat Scheme  
Give food and litter at charity rates through our corporate sponsor The Water Dish 

Geylang food district TNR - round 3 report!

| In a back alley of Geylang |

This round of TNR was made possible by Duke who is donating the full proceeds of his awesome 2012 calendar to our Sterilisation Fund!

We started at around 6pm, just before the second feeder came around. The first feeder is an elderly uncle who works here.

Feeder uncle, at the feeding point

The second feeder came by at half past six, but the cats that hadn't yet been neutered weren't very close to her either. So we trapped the cats we could.

At the beginning of the alley, there was a group of cats that hung out together and climbed up to the second storey of the building via ducting.

Cat exiting the building onto aircon compressor

This cat was the most outgoing of the group

We finally managed to trap it

Laid the trap on the compressor to lure the others

This is the second storey

This ah beng cat totally walked by our traps!

From the beginning of the alley we went to where we trapped the cats from during the second round, in the middle of the alley.

This is Little Black, TNR-ed last round

We trapped Little Black's remaining brothers and friends.

A lot more debris here for cats to hide amongst

Some hide just outside the shop backdoors

This cat was very reserved and hid for a long time

We had to watch from a distance

Some were easier to lure...

...some hid behind flower pots in drains

In between the start of the alley and this feeding point where the uncle was, we also trapped a few.

Little Black's younger relative

Possibly related to the aircon cats

This kitty came out only after sunset

In total, 9 cats were trapped and sterilised. There were 8 male cats and 1 female cat, total cost $355. Seems like the females are perpetually in hiding. We only spotted one other obviously female cat but she was nursing month-old kittens inside the feeder uncle's shop. We will try our luck here again at a different timing yet again to see if the female cats emerge, during our next TNR round in the next alley. (Yes we are doing the alley cats in succession).

Meanwhile, here are the mug shots of the 9 cats.

Black/white

Black/white

Black/white

Tabby/white

Black/white

Tabby/white

Tabby

Black

Black

(Apologies for the blurry photos towards the end, our camera ran out of battery at that precise time!)

Thank you to all who made this possible. We will be planning our next TNR round at the following odd-numbered lorong. Here's to the good health of all the cats of Geylang's food district!

Give financially to our cause by depositing to our bank account POSB savings 188-52652-7    
Sponsor a foster kitten's vaccination through our Sponsor-A-LoveKuching-Cat Scheme  
Give food and litter at charity rates through our corporate sponsor The Water Dish 

2012: Doing what we do, better

The new year is about doing things even better, about raising the bar yet again.

We expounded on our foster care work in the last 2012 post - about its importance, and also its great need for sustainability through your giving.

This need is still great, do take a look. We still need your help.

Foster care lies in the Heart quadrant

Now we we are looking at an aspect of the matrix - the Star - that costs far less money, but creates almost as much impact - cat care education. Cat care education is one of our 4 mission objectives and we believe in reaching out to all cat owners and potential cat owners in how to make their cats' lives - and the humans' too! - better. Loving the cats in our lives.

So far we have been sharing tips on cat care through online mediums such as our blog, Facebook, Twitter, Formspring and through emails and calls. Last year we also held a small informal gathering for cat owners where we shared cat care tips. We want to make an even greater impact in our cat care education this year. 

We would like to introduce two new Volunteers with Portfolios this year, who among other things, will be helping Love Kuching make cat care education even more impactful this year. We have our new Communications Volunteer, Sarah, and our Events Volunteer, Li Si.

A lot more brainstorming still needs to be done on the specific mediums we will be embarking on, but we will be getting better at our Star, because it is sustainable and makes an impact for cat welfare.

Give financially to our cause by depositing to our bank account POSB savings 188-52652-7  
Sponsor a foster kitten's vaccination through our Sponsor-A-LoveKuching-Cat Scheme  
Give food and litter at charity rates through our corporate sponsor The Water Dish 

Geylang food district - TNR round 2!

Covering the cat colonies of Geylang's food district, lorong by lorong!

We went back to our first site to trap the remaining cats on Wednesday, before moving on to the latest site we wrote about.

Turns out that there were more cats than we counted leftover at the previous site. 3 of them look almost alike, so we must have counted them as 1 cat!

Examining our trap, meow!

These cats were nearer to the coffeeshop than to the gambling den.

Yes, it is the same cat!

Another one being trapped

Here are the 4 cats we trapped at this first location.

White/black

White/black

White/black

White/silver

Who's still there at the gambling den / coffeeshop? The same mommy cat and kittens we saw.

Mom and kiddo

So then we moved to the next alley.

There, the cats were already waiting and hungry.

Hanging out at coffeeshop tables in the alley

Attracted by us humans with food!

"Where's the food!"

Some are less hidey than others

This kitty was very human friendly

We tried to trap as many females as possible first, but many of them were in hiding at this time of day. Those we saw weren't too keen on strangers, even the feeder uncle couldn't get close to them.

Preparing the traps

So we trapped a mixture of male and female cats.

Tabby/white

Black/white

Black

We will have to return to this site to get the remaining cats neutered.

Lots more to be neutered, here are 2

We will announce the date and time of our next round of TNR here over Twitter!

Give financially to our cause by depositing to our bank account POSB savings 188-52652-7  
Sponsor a foster kitten's vaccination through our Sponsor-A-LoveKuching-Cat Scheme  
Give food and litter at charity rates through our corporate sponsor The Water Dish