Paws and Pumpkins Rescue

11/13/2024

We are now a registered nonprofit with Oregon Bottle Drop! We should start showing up on the nonprofit search section within the next 2 days but for now, you can bring your cans and bottles in to the shop! Please make sure the cans are empty, clean and dry! If you can bring them in a bag of some kind that would be wonderful but it’s not required. We’ve got some huge goals for next year and we need a lot of funding to make those goals a reality. While it might not seem like a few cans will help that much, one bag is worth roughly $6-7. I’m only one person so I fill maybe 1-3 bags a month and that’s already about $20. That’s a case of food or a vaccine or gas to get a load of cats to Portland to get fixed. Stop by during normal shop hours, Tuesday-Saturday 11am-5pm, to drop off your bottles and cans!

11/12/2024

We have raised $200 for this poor girl so far but we have nothing left in our emergency fund aside from that. We can’t afford to get her treated until we have the funds to do so. If you are able to donate, we can take donations on our website, GoFundMe, Venmo and Cashapp. We also have finally gotten registered with Oregon Bottle Drop and we’ve started accepting donations of bottles and cans to turn in for funds. Bring your bottles and cans by the sho during regular hours to donate them!

11/10/2024

Nominate us for the chance to win $1,000!
We are at the very bottom of our savings and $1,000 would help us immensely in rebuilding our savings after our move. Nominate us on Maps Credit Union’s website

Maps Credit UnionGiving Tuesday ContestOfficial Rules Promotion PeriodPromotion begins on November 6, 2024 at 12:00am, and ends on November 22, 2024 at 11:59pm (the “Promotion Period”). No purchase necessary. EntryBy entering the Promotion, each entrant accepts and agrees to be bound by these Of...

11/08/2024

The phone situation has been solved and I have a replacement now! You can now call the rescue again!

11/08/2024

I want to start off by saying thank you to the people who were concerned for the cats last night and went to check on them. I had to be notified by people on Facebook that there was a fire in the shop next door to me last night. I’m shocked and very upset that nobody at the scene bothered to call or notify me at all to tell me about it when it was happening. I should not have to hear about these things over Facebook. Thank you to the people who went over to check on them and make sure the fire hadn’t spread to my shop and thank you to the people who messaged me here to let me know.

11/07/2024

We may not have had 501c3 status in time to be officially on the nominations list but you can still write us in for nominations under the Nonprofit of the year category! We won the New Business of the Year award last year thanks to all of your votes and this year we are aiming for Nonprofit of the Year. Please send in your write in nominations before November 15th to let the Chamber know how many crazy cat lovers we have in this community! Things like this really make a huge impact on our small nonprofit since any bit of recognition we can get for our cause could mean another donor, another adopter, another person who becomes aware of our mission. We need all the help we can get right now and this would definitely help get more eyes on the cats! So send in your nominations now and let’s see how large our community of cat lovers has become this last year! Link to vote is in our bio and our story highlights!

11/07/2024

Help us get nominated to be a candidate for the Nonprofit of the Year Award!
We may not have had official 501c3 status in time to be officially on the list this year for nominations but you can still write us in for the Nonprofit of the year award! As a small nonprofit, things like this are a huge deal for us since they help us get recognition for our cause. Last year we won the New Business of the Year Award thanks to all of your votes and we are hopeful that with enough write-in nominations, we can show how amazing this community of cat lovers is and how far we’ve come this last year. Voting ends November 15th so vote now before this round ends!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdP-7TaIeXJZe8mH0wKF2qlpyChUkRB_WsYBu46SVLoPMEL9w/viewform?pli=1&pli=1

🌸🌼 Nominations are open for the MICC 60th Annual Community Awards! 🌼🌸

It’s time to celebrate 60 years of community excellence! Help us keep it groovy by nominating the incredible people and businesses making a difference in our community.

🗓 Primary Nomination Period: November 1 - 15
📲 Scan the QR code or use the link below to submit your nominations: https://forms.gle/inJT53GgPMwtktCM7

Let’s recognize the stars of our community! ✨

11/06/2024

Update: As of 11/07 I have a working phone now so the rescue can take calls again!
So sorry for the radio silence the last few days! I lost my phone to the ocean on Sunday and I’ve been working on getting a new one since then. I won’t be able to take calls or texts until I get it replaced and since I currently can’t afford a new one, it’s taken me a bit longer than I would’ve liked to find a replacement for it. The easiest way to contact the rescue in the meantime will be via email. I am doing my best to keep up with all the messages from various platforms but responses will likely be a bit more delayed until this issue is resolved. We had already started shifting communication to be fully email and website based. It just makes it easier for me to see and respond to all messages. I’m hoping to get a replacement phone today and I’ll keep you all updated on when that happens but until then, please email the rescue if you need to get ahold of us. Calls and texts will just be sent to the sea creatures down with my old phone 😅

11/04/2024

Update: I've been told that the cats have made it back home! Thanks everyone!
To the individual who came in on Saturday evening saying they found these cats out by an old barn in town, I hope you see this. The cats you found do in fact belong to someone and they would very much like them back. I attached a screenshot of their post so if you see this, hopefully you can reach out to them and work out how to get them back home!

11/02/2024

Best. Gift. Ever! Thank you so much to for sending this along with some donations for the cats! I will definitely be curled up on my couch with a cup of tea enjoying this book tonight. If you don’t know what Cats of the World is, check out She’s the author and she’s talked about the book and the creation process a lot on her page. I was waiting until we aren’t in such a rough financial patch to get it myself so getting it as a gift is absolutely amazing!

11/01/2024

Before you freak out, we know she has a collar, she has unfortunately been abandoned. This poor girl got left behind when her owner moved out of their apartment but she still hangs out by their back door. Many of the residents in this apartment complex have told me that she and a few other cats got left behind when that tenant moved out. Sometime during the months after they left, this sweet girl injured her leg and has not been able to get treatment for it since then. We attempted to trap her exactly a week ago today but we ended up catching Tom instead (or rather, he caught himself). We were very fortunate with Tom’s case that we were able to find a vet who could see him so soon to get him neutered so now we are gearing up to go back and try again to catch this injured female. However, we are at the bottom of our savings right now and we absolutely won’t be able to afford her care without your help. We don’t want to leave her out there to suffer when she has such a large open wound but we do want to make sure that we have all our ducks in a row this time before trying to trap her. Since she has to be treated for her injury and spayed before being released we have to make sure we have all the funding we need to get her taken care of before we do anything so she doesn’t have to stay with us any longer than necessary. This way she won’t be as stressed and we can get her taken care of as quickly as possible. If you are able to donate, we are trying to raise at least $800 for her treatment. We know that she will likely need to see an emergency vet for her injury as soon as we trap her and any emergency vet will charge around $100 just for a cat to be seen, not including any treatment. In her case, we are expecting about $500 in treatment and another $200 to get her spayed, treated for parasites and vaccinated. Just a heads up, our GoFundMe is holding all of our donations right now since we’re having some issues with transferring their deposits to our nonprofit bank account so if donations can be made on our website or over Venmo, that would be the most helpful for us right now.
Thanks again to our amazing donor who paid for all of Tom’s medical expenses!

11/01/2024

We are in need of cleaning volunteers for at least this next week. We also have some cats that need to take pill medication this next week so if anyone has any experience with that and wants to volunteer to help with that, please let us know. We mostly need some help with cleaning and sanitizing the shop in the mornings but we could also use a few afternoon/evening volunteers as well. Time slots would be sometime between 9-11am for the mornings and 3-5pm in the afternoons. If you’re volunteering to help administer pill medication to the cats, only the 9-11am slot is available for that. If you’d like to help us keep our space clean for our kitties, we’d really appreciate it! You can fill out our volunteer form on our website and select the cleaning positions if you’re interested!

10/30/2024

Tom’s appointment went well yesterday and all his expenses were covered by his generous donor. I’ll be holding him today so he has time to eat and I can make sure he is healing normally and then, if all goes well, he’ll be released back into his colony later this evening. We’re hoping to catch the injured female next and possibly some of the kittens wandering around that also haven’t been fixed yet but we will need donations to help cover their expenses. The Feral Cat Coalition is booked up for the next couple months at least so we are on our own to figure out how to pay for their medical care. The cat overpopulation issue is already so bad and we don’t want to wait around and give the cats more time to have even more kittens so the sooner we can get this done, the less kittens we’ll have wandering the streets this winter.

10/30/2024

I have gotten a lot of questions over the past few months about where donations go and, especially now that we are a 501c3, I want to continue being fully transparent about where your money goes when you support our rescue. The screenshot you see in the picture is a section of a spreadsheet that I keep of each month’s spendings and earnings for the shop. The totals you see for Monthly Net Earnings are what’s leftover after all business expenses were paid that month. That is the amount I keep each month to pay my own bills. Now obviously, most months I am not taking home enough to pay for all my own personal expenses so I have been working off my savings for most of my own needs. This was to be expected as most small businesses take a few years to even see a profit. For about two years during college I worked full time, while doing school full time and the farmers market/vendor events on the weekends so I could have enough savings built up for after graduation. That gave me the resources I needed to get this rescue off the ground initially without any loans or going into debt at all. That being said, you can see from the spreadsheet table that since I didn’t even have enough to cover my own expenses most months, I clearly didn’t have enough to start building up savings for the rescue. I feel like I’ve been very fortunate to get this rescue as far as it has without incurring any debt or pulling out any loans and we’ve always been able to make ends meet when we need to. However, given how much our rescue has grown this last year, it’s no longer sustainable for me to use my own savings to support the rescues needs. I used nearly everything I had in my own savings just getting all the moving expenses covered this month and it’s leaving me with barely enough to scrape by with both the shop rent and my own rent next month. If you are able to donate at all this month, any amount is appreciated! We are also almost setup with Oregon Bottle Drop as a nonprofit so you’ll be able to donate to us through them soon as well! We are so grateful to all our supporters for helping us get this far! Don’t forget, our Grand Opening event starts today and runs through November 2nd!

10/29/2024

Since I will be running back and forth between the shop and Wilsonville tomorrow, our Grand Opening is going to be delayed until Wednesday, October 30th. Since the shop will have to close early tomorrow so I can go pick up Tom from his neuter appointment, I decided it’s best to just wait until the shop can actually be open the whole day. The shop will be open from 11am-6pm on Wednesday through Friday and 11am-7pm Saturday. All paid visits to the cat lounge during those days will have a buy one get one free sale. We look forward to seeing you all for the Grand Opening!

10/26/2024

To my Instagram followers, surprise surprise, we have a chaotic situation on our hands 😅 I posted about this on Facebook last night in all my panic trying to find help but now that the situation has calmed down a bit, here’s the full update on the situation. Yesterday afternoon I got a call about an injured female cat in Dallas so I went out to try to trap her. While I was out there, I was talking to a lot of the residents in the apartment complex this cat is in since I noticed a lot of them have warming shelters by their doors. Everyone said that the cats are taken care of by the community here since a few of them were left behind when a previous tenant moved out. They’ve since had kittens and now there’s more but they all act like stray cats at this point. I setup a trap for the injured female and she seemed to know how it worked and wouldn’t go all the way in. I pulled the food out of the trap to add some extra smelly food to try to tempt her in. During that time, Tom (what we’re calling the cat in the picture, very creative, I know) walked himself in there and bumped the door stand shut, effectively catching himself. The problem was, we didn’t have any appointments setup to get him neutered anytime soon, and it’s a Friday afternoon so offices were closing for the weekend. We needed to figure out what to do with him fast or we’d be forced to release him and likely never catch him again (or at least not anytime soon). After many hours of phone calls and driving around, we finally got directed to a clinic in Wilsonville that can see him first thing Tuesday morning. It’s longer than I’d normally want to hold a cat but given that he’s not 100% feral and that it’ll help prevent more kittens from being born outside, we took the appointment. We are incredibly grateful to this clinic for squishing him in so soon and a generous donor has offered to pay for all his medical expenses so we can focus our attention back to the injured female.

10/25/2024

So we have a bit of an emergency situation on our hands now. There’s an unfixed male cat that was hanging around this injured female cat we were trying to trap and while we turned around to get some treats to bait the trap, he walked himself in the trap and it shut behind him. I don’t want to release him since he’s not fixed and I know I wouldn’t catch him again anytime soon, if ever, once he’s released but I don’t have an appointment setup anywhere to get him fixed. I called Alpine Animal Hospital and they don’t have anything until next Friday so if anyone knows of a place that I could get him fixed sooner so we’re not causing him stress longer than necessary, that would be great!
Edit: We have an appointment setup for him first thing Tuesday morning. It’s longer than I’d like to hold him but it’s the best we can do for now. No, he is not anyone’s cat. We always check that before taking the cats we trap and in this case, the residents in the apartment complex know all these cats and know that they’ve been abandoned here. On Tuesday he is getting a rabies vaccine, exam and a neuter surgery. The bill has been quoted at just under $250. Since it’s all the way down in Wilsonville, we are aiming to raise $250 to help cover a tiny bit of the gas cost to get out there. It’s quite a bit more expensive than where we normally go but given that they’re able to squeeze us in on such short notice, we are incredibly grateful for the chance to get him the medical care he needs. If you can help us cover his bill, it would be greatly appreciated! We still have to catch the injured female cat we originally went out there for and we have no idea how much her medical expenses will be.