What's New
Facility.  It's looking like our new facility will be ready to occupy by the end of July.  The farmhouse has been totally renovated, from leaking basement to leaking roof.  We're very pleased with the end-result, are sure the cats will be and hope that visitors will be also.  However the outside work is hung up in regulatory approvals.  We want to pave the drive and add a small paved parking area, but this addition requires a storm water detention pond.  Since we're within 500 feet of a major stream, this requires approval by the State's DEQ.  The township has assured us that this won't delay our opening.  We have a fine gravel drive and plenty of grassed-area parking.   But it's not senior-navigable -- and that may delay our cat facilitated therapy plans.

Executive Director.  Building on a relationship that began 18 months ago, we chose Amy Marcinkowski to head up our TLC programs.  She becomes our ED September 1st and will reside at the farm.  Amy is currently a social worker for Safe House and has been active in the local cat community in her free time for several years.  Last summer alone she rescued, hand-fed and socialized over 40 feral kittens and then successfully placed them through vet clinics and private shelters.  Once she gets settled in, she'll be actively recruiting volunteers to help with the cat work and developing our programs.  We're very pleased to have Amy on our team.

Help Wanted
We're looking for people with good knowledge of native plants and wildlife to help us plan what to do with the rest of the site.  Our cat area takes up no more than a couple of acres.  That leaves well over 20 acres that we'd like to see evolve as a visitor-accessible, wildlife-friendly nature preserve.  The more we walk the site, the more intrigued we are with the possibilities.  At 1/4-mile deep by over an 1/8-mile wide, the site gently rises from the stream on the east side, through relatively wet land, thence through a relatively mature forest, ending in a couple of hundred feet of open pasture.  Wildlife is abundant -- birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles.  We want to improve the site but fear damaging it with our limited knowledge.  It's clear from the conservation people we've talked to that no one person has the breadth of knowledge we need -- so we're looking for input from people with specific knowledge.  If you're interested, give us a call and we'll arrange a time to walk the site with you.

Barn Cat Adoptions
Sunning on a farmhouse porch west of Ann Arbor as people drive up to purchase fresh eggs --~ frolicking in the hay at horse farms in Dexter, Chelsea and Willis -- quietly keeping mice at bay in a historic farmhouse -- cat-napping outside the barns at a farm near Milan while the family's sled dogs watch from their pen.  These are places you can find the fortunate "barn cats" that we have relocated and the caring people who have offered to provide lifelong homes for them.

Who are these cats?  Several were the last members of a feral cat colony near downtown Ypsilanti.  Although a standard in TNR (trap-neuter-return) programs such as ours is returning the cats to their "home", it is occasionally necessary to relocate them.  In this case, an entire block of houses, including their elderly caretakers' apartment building, was being demolished to make way for a factory parking lot.  Other cats that we have placed were long-time shelter residents with little chance of being adopted before making the break from the cage to the countryside.  Elvis, pictured above, lived at the Mosaic Feline Refuge in Ann Arbor for about two years before moving to a lovely horse farm in the Irish Hills along with two other of his shelter friends

An essential part of cat relocations is a month-long confinement period.  The cats must be kept in a very large kennel complete with a litter box and food or, even better, in an escape-proof tack room or milk house.  This helps to prevent the cats, many of whom are shy and only minimally socialized,

About TLC TLC/for The Love of Cats is a program of the Zimmer Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation founded in 1980.  Our mission is to provide humane alternatives to euthanasia for the community management of companion and feral cats in Washtenaw County.  Financial or service contributions to our spay/neuter programs will help extend the number of spay/neuters we can accomplish.  For more information visit our web site at TLConline.org.