VOLUNTEERS – WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT THEM?

Animal rescue work requires dedicated volunteers, concerted fundraising efforts, and a willingness to face difficult situations. All rescues benefit from the foregoing to varying degrees. In addition, every successful rescue also depends on partnerships with individuals and organizations. Precious Pets Almost Home (PPAH) is not different, benefiting from a history of strong corporate partnerships, including with Petsmart and Petco.

While we could not do without our corporate partnerships, we also could not function without partnerships with individuals. From the outside, rescue, vetting, and adopting out cats and dogs might seem like a routine process. A pet comes into a rescue, is given necessary medical care, someone applies, and the pet joins its forever home. However, behind the scenes, it can take dozens of volunteers to ensure a single successful adoption. In the spirit of honoring our partnerships with amazing individuals, we would like to highlight a recent PPAH success story and describe how, through the web of our compassionate volunteers, a cat progresses from rescue to adoption.

Dee Dee’s most notable features are her beautiful grayish blue coat, black nose, and independence. Dee Dee came to us after she was kicked out of her home. Upon her arrival, we discovered that she was pregnant. She spent a few months in a loving foster home where she gave birth to a litter of 5 kittens. When her kittens were weaned and old enough for adoption, Dee Dee went into an adoption center at a pet store partner for adoption. Unfortunately, she did not do well in a small cat condo and was transferred to another loving foster home. Just this weekend, Dee Dee interviewed an interested applicant, give her seal of approval and was adopted! That sounds easy, doesn’t it?

This definitely was not as easy as it sounds. To make this story a success, a transport volunteer originally picked Dee Dee up from where she was abandoned and brought her to a foster home. The dedicated foster family made sure Dee Dee gave birth safely, watched over the newborns, intervened by transporting Dee Dee and the kittens to the vet as needed for medical and preventative care. When Dee Dee was ready for adoption and taken to a pet store partner, a dozen volunteers, and the store staff, worked together to do everything they could to make Dee Dee as comfortable as possible, despite her somewhat obvious displeasure.

When we realized that she wasn’t thriving in a store setting, yet another wonderful foster volunteer came forward and opened her home to Dee Dee. She also transported Dee Dee to the vet as needed for medical and preventative care, and worked with Dee Dee to improve her social skills and assess her personality in order to make the best match possible when it came to applicants. Over the course of these few months, we also had a small team of volunteers promoting Dee Dee on various web sites and social media. Finally, our adoption counselor screened and interviewed our first ever applicant for Dee Dee, and took time out of her weekend to finalize the adoption and send Dee Dee to her forever home.

In the first draft of this Holiday newsletter, Dee Dee was highlighted as our Cat of the Month. Since that draft, she has been adopted and is now snuggled warmly into a cozy bed in her forever home!! Success stories like Dee Dee’s are made possible by the tireless efforts of the dedicated individuals with whom we have such special relationships. We can never extend enough gratitude to the network of individuals that volunteer their time with Precious Pets in order to see cats like Dee Dee go from homeless and forgotten to cherished family member.
Please continue reading to learn about some more success stories and ways that you can support our mission and contribute to happy tales like Dee Dee’s.

Homes for the Holidays?
We like to think of Cormia and her five kittens as our early Holiday Miracle. After being pulled from CACC, the kittens became seriously ill with Panleuk. This disease is very often fatal. Two of the tiny babies had to be hospitalized for expensive, round-the-clock care; the other three were nursed in their foster home. We are so thankful that they survived and are now healthy, happy, fixed, vaccinated, and ready for their forever homes. Find out more about this family by visiting their profiles on Petfinder or the Featured Stories page on our website for stories about mom and kittens Qhuinn, Nyx, Shekinah, Shaunee and Kalona.

More Success Stories
Cactus Flower. We are so excited that Cactus Flower has found her forever home. We rescued Cactus Flower at the beginning of 2016. After she was vetted, she made her way to an adoption center, where she sat overlooked for many weeks. Hoping that all she needed was a different audience, we transferred her to the adoption center at another pet store partner. Still, no one was interested in adding this sweetheart to their home, so she was transferred again. During this entire time, our small team of PR volunteers had been posting Cactus Flower’s bio everywhere they could, but the online effort yielded no interest either. Finally, a volunteer took Cactus Flower home to give her a chance to stretch her legs. As soon as she left the adoption center, a lovely couple who had been visiting her there for a while learned that she was gone from the store but was still not adopted. At that point, they realized that they didn’t want to spend another day without her—and Dee Dee had a home for the Holidays.

Toto. Toto is a sweet, small Cairn Terrier mix. Yes, we rescue dogs too and yes, he looks just like Dorothy’s Toto. We pulled Toto from CACC after he had been there for over a month. Toto was skin and bones, had an upper respiratory infection, smelled like something you definitely don’t want us describing here, and wouldn’t eat a thing – well not any food designed for dogs (or cats for that matter). Thankfully, our dedicated volunteers got him cleaned up and found a mixture of food that he would eat. We gave him lots of good food, boosting his weight from 7 pounds to 10.6 pounds and gave him lots of love, boosting his self-confidence and his trust in humans. We are happy to announce that Toto found his forever home just this week. He will be tucked in with his new family just in time for the Holiday festivities (and some turkey if that’s what’s for dinner).

We hope that you’ve enjoyed sharing in our recent success stories and hope that you will continue to support us in our efforts to save the homeless cats, kittens—and even dogs of Chicago.

Aurora, Kari, Debbie and Sid