PHILOSOPHY
Northern Colorado Friends of Ferals (NCFF) is dedicated to humanely reducing the community cat population in Northern Colorado. We feel that healthy cats deserve to live out their lives on farms and ranches and other places they are being fed and where they have shelter. We understand that almost everyone likes a few cats around, but no one wants 50 cats to feed and care for. Our aim is to get as many colonies altered and vaccinated as possible. This helps our local shelters reduce the numbers of cats they take in each year.
MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of Northern Colorado Friends of Ferals is to reduce the number of homeless and stray cats through its Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) clinics. For each cat or kitten that we “fix,” countless lives are saved by decreasing the number of kittens brought into the world and by reducing the numbers of cats that end up in shelters. We provide each cat or kitten we treat with the vaccinations and medical care they may need to live healthy lives. The community benefits as much as the cats.
Alley Cat Allies estimates 80% of all feral cats are intact and only 2% of domestic cats are intact; thus the problem must be coming largely from the feral population breeding constantly.
When the light bulb went off, we enlisted the help of Alley Cat Allies’ research and our local no-kill cat shelter to put together the resources we needed to begin our trap-neuter/spay-release (TNR) program. Our goal for the first year was to trap, alter, and vaccinate 500 feral cats in northern Colorado. We had no idea how we would do it or where the funds would come from, but the universe was in sync with us and we accomplished our goal. By the end of our second year we had altered 1,025 cats, found homes for 77 kittens, relocated 63 feral cats, and rescued 43 ear-tipped cats from local shelters.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Colorado Friends of Ferals began in March 2009 by Leslie Vogt and Jan Link, president and vice president of the board of directors, respectively. Other board members include:
- Cindy Fravel
- Kristin Parsons
- Tom Cochran
- Laura Schafer
- Lauren Abrahamsen, DVM
- Tess Hamzeh
NCFF is grateful to have many generous volunteers who give their time to trap, work in our clinics as vet techs and surgeons, foster cats and kittens, do mountains of laundry, clean traps, and do anything else that is needed. We are especially grateful for our veterinarians, Drs: Lauren Abrahamsen, Sasha Richardson, Tom Welsh, Amanda Payne, Ben Singh and Joseph Sharrock. These veterinarians have altered thousands of cats. They are experts in their field of high volume, high quality spay/neuter.
Several clinics in Fort Collins, Loveland, and Wellington have provided clinic space, medical supplies and veterinary help. Big thanks to Dr. Tom Welsh, Dr. Jill Weich of Fossil Ridge Animal Clinic in Fort Collins, Dr. Lauren Abrahamsen, and Blue Sky Animal Hospital. Without their generous help we would not have been able to do half the alterations we have done since we began.
NCFF is continually grateful to Animal Rescue of the Rockies who fosters young kittens and strays and find homes for them.
And, of course, NCFF would not be possible without the help of our generous donors.
Thanks to you all, we are making a big difference!
Northern Colorado Friends of Ferals 