Hello to Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Return (TNVR) in 2024, to M-CCC’s new website, and to the first M-CCC Blog post, which you’re reading right now. There is a lot to cover so let’s get at it.

TNVR in 2024

M-CCC is still compiling numbers for our TNVR activities in 2023, based on bills we’ve paid for costs associated with spay/neuter surgeries, but we know we’ll end the year with 800 – 1,000 cats TNVRed, which has been our standard for several years. Those TNVR numbers are the result of many, many volunteer hours spent trapping, many early mornings spent waiting in line at the spay-neuter clinic (Texas Coalition for Animal Protection), and many dollars provided by our generous supporters. Thanks to everyone who has a part in this important work.

Looking ahead, M-CCC would like to get an early start on “kitten season” in 2024, so we’re encouraging our volunteers and area residents to take advantage of the winter months to trap cats, get them neutered and prevent more litters from being born in the spring. Trapping in the winter can be tricky, however, because we don’t want to expose any cats to extreme temperatures while they are in traps. It’s important to limit the hours traps are out and to keep an eye on them, so cats that are humanely trapped can be kept in a safe and warm area while waiting for their trip to the spay-neuter clinic in the morning.

M-CCC has trapped and fixed thousands of cats over the last 9 years and we’ve had much success reducing the births of new kittens. In fact, we are coming up on the 10-year anniversary or our efforts in 2024! But we don’t see any lessening of the demand to spay and neuter as many cats as possible throughout the year to contain the unbridled reproduction of kittens. That is what TNVR is all about – less unowned, outdoor community cats in our neighborhoods, and improved lives for the cats already there.

New Website!

We got an outstanding opportunity to update and improve M-CCC’s website last year when volunteers from SAP, the international software development company, agreed to help with the site as a corporate philanthropy effort. We owe many thanks to the North Texas Community Foundation and to Catchafire, an organization that helps non-profits, for putting us in touch with the SAP volunteers who worked on our site from their offices in Chicago, Canada and Germany! We would specifically like to thank Talha Khan, Natalie Woronko, Leanne McLaren and Muhammad Butt of SAP for their work on the site. We also want to thank Ting Huang, Department Chair for Communication Arts and Associate Professor of Photography at Tarrant County College, Northeast Campus, for supporting the effort with volunteer photography. One of our former M-CCC members and founders, Jenifer Saldana, also contributed photos. And thanks to our friend John Scott for his technical and marketing oversight and advice.

We hope everyone will enjoy the new website and put it to good use. The website is intended to be a resource to help promote TNVR and provide helpful information such as referrals and best practices. I almost forgot to mention, the SAP volunteers also designed a new logo for M-CCC, which you will see on the site. It represents a kitty with a tipped ear – imagine that!

The M-CCC Blog

As we introduce our new website and continue to communicate about our mission on Facebook and other forums, we decided to start an M-CCC Blog which we’ll update monthly. You’re reading the first edition right now.

So, why do we want to have a blog?

As M-CCC’s current president and as the husband of one of the founders, I’ve learned over the past several years that animal welfare can have lots of challenges. There are great and glorious moments, when you have the satisfaction of knowing you have helped voiceless animals such as unowned community cats, but there are also frustrations and disappointments. In this blog, I plan to write about all those things and hopefully share some of what I’ve learned about volunteerism and animal welfare from being part of M-CCC.

After working more than 30 years in corporate communications and international business, I thought I was well prepared for an unpaid volunteer position leading a TNVR group with a bunch of self-proclaimed cat people. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. My involvement with TNVR has since branched out into many related areas such as making difficult medical care decisions about severely ill or injured cats, dealing with angry cat haters, consoling volunteers affected by compassion fatigue, speaking to city officials and city councils, fundraising, testifying about the importance of TNVR at the State Capitol, rising early (and I do mean EARLY) to get in line at the spay-neuter clinic before dawn, and many other unexpected situations. I plan to write about these kinds of topics in this blog, and not all of it will be happy news. Some topics may be controversial, but that’s all part of the TNVR mission and journey. Please hang in there with me and let’s see where it goes.

As always, thank you to the many supporters and volunteers who make it possible for M-CCC to implement our mission of improving lives for the unowned, outdoor, and often unfortunate community cats. We appreciate and depend on you as indispensable partners in this quest to be a voice for the voiceless.