2006 Year in Review

President’s Message

Dear Friends,

The past year has been a productive one for Commonwealth Cats. Since we started our Spay, Neuter and Vaccination Clinic late in 2004 we have held 12 clinics. During these clinics we have admitted 483 cats into our program. At our first clinic in November of 2004 we admitted 19 feral cats. The number of cats that we have been able to accommodate has grown steadily and during our last 3 clinics we have admitted approximately 60 cats to each one. There are many factors that determine the number of cats that are admitted at each clinic. These include the space available to us in the facility we use, the number of veterinarians, technicians and other volunteers who are willing to participate, the funding we have available to purchase supplies, and the success of the caretakers and trappers in catching the cats for which they have made reservations. We have seen a 14.81% increase over 2005 in the number of cats per clinic that we have served. We are very proud of our growth, our volunteers and our many supporters.

I'd like to share with you some of Commonwealth Cats' additional highlights from the past year. Recently, we welcomed Traci Garofalo-Bookbinder, a Certified Veterinary Technician and Commonwealth Cats volunteer, to our Board of Directors. We look forward to having her expertise and assistance to help us further the work we do to help the cats.

As most of you know, conducting a surgery clinic requires extensive medical supplies and surgical equipment. For each female cat spayed, the surgeon uses a set of sterile instruments bundled together and referred to as a "spay pack." After each surgery, the instruments are cleaned, re-packaged and sterilized by a technician. This process is time consuming and requires a trained volunteer (and both time and volunteers are precious resources at our clinics). Because Commonwealth Cats typically admits 30-60 cats at each of our clinics, we must have a sufficient number of spay packs available to accommodate the greatest number of female cats we might possibly encounter. During our first year of operations, our organization was fortunate to be able to borrow surgery packs from the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society, which runs a similar clinic program. As 2005 came to a close, Commonwealth Cats had raised the funds to purchase 15 of our own Spay Packs. We have continued to share surgical instruments with Merrimack's Sunday Spay/Neuter Clinic program; we have found that this allows both programs to more efficiently help a larger number of cats.

Another exciting opportunity arrived for Commonwealth Cats in June, when we were invited to use the spay/neuter hospital at MSPCA Angell's new Copeland Animal Care and Adoption Center. It was a treat to be able to use this Center and we are grateful to each of the people on the MSPCA's Shelter Team who made it possible for us to use their facility. In addition to state of the art equipment, we benefited from a large space to hold the traps which allowed us to admit more cats into our program.

In the coming year we hope to continue to reach out to the many feral cats who will benefit from our service. Thank you to all of you who have provided the support to make this program successful. Our mission is to provide sterilization and vaccination services for the health and population control of feral cats in Massachusetts. We hope you will continue to join us in helping to provide care for some of Massachusetts neediest cats.

Warm Wishes,
Sharlene Sallet