Volunteer with Friends of Feral Felines!
Giving Cats Their Best Chance
Some colonies include kittens who, with care in a foster home, may become adoptable. Even some adults may be naturally more sociable and can be fostered and then adopted. If the cats cannot return to their colony site (property owners may refuse to allow the cats back, or the site may be unsafe), or the situation involves only one or two cats, FoFF works to place the cats in barns, where they earn their keep as mousers and the barn owner serves as colony manager.
How You Can Help
The process of Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) requires ongoing commitment from volunteers who feed, monitor, and manage colonies; transport cats to and from the veterinarian; foster cats during their recovery or before their adoption; and raise funds to support the need for food, litter, supplies, and veterinary services.
If you’d like to support FoFF’s efforts through volunteering, please take a look at the various volunteer opportunities available below. We’ll train you in your chosen volunteer job(s), assign you an ongoing mentor, and put you to work with a wonderful team for a great cause.
Thank you for offering your time as a volunteer for FoFF.
We look forward to working with you!
Volunteer Jobs — Something for Everyone!
Hands-On Cat Care: If you like to work directly with cats in the field, you might enjoy feeding or managing a feral colony, or even trapping or transporting cats for medical care.
Fundraising and Educating: If you like raising money, passion, and public awareness, you might like to attend our table at pet stores and craft fairs or write for our newsletter or website.
Once you decide what you might like to do, fill out a volunteer application, and we’ll get you started!
Thank you for offering your time as a volunteer for FoFF. We look forward to working with you!
Hands-On Cat Care
Click on arrow ( > ) to open/close.
Trapping volunteers entice feral cats into a Havahart® Live Animal trap so that they can be given medical care. This involves setting the traps and monitoring them so that no cat remains in a trap unattended for very long.
Trappers may need to teach others to use the trap if a property owner is willing to help but doesn’t know how to use the trap.
Feral cats need very special foster homes with caregivers who can be patient and build love and trust with cats who have been neglected and fearful of humans for most of their lives. It is estimated that
82% of feral kittens become satisfactory pets in time, with socialization being easier the younger the cat is when trapped.
Once trapped, a feral cat needs to go to one of our participating veterinarians for a medical checkup, neutering, shots, etc. After medical care, the cat may need transport to our recuperation shed or to a foster home, depending upon whether they need recovery time before they return to the colony or are candidates for socialization and eventual adoption.
All over southern Maine are feral cats that have been neutered by FoFF and returned to their colony of origin. With neutering, the colony no longer grows in numbers, but it still needs care for the occasional fertile newcomer, injury, and in some cases simply the provision of food. Often, the property owner who houses the colony provides ongoing food and monitoring; in other cases, FoFF volunteers provide the feeding.
Along the Portland waterfront, a feeding team of about seven people feeds up to five colonies each night. In other areas, where the colonies are fewer, a FoFF feeder may work alone or with another volunteer.
A cat who is having surgery and then returning to a monitored colony may need a day before or after surgery in a recovery home. The cat would stay in a kennel that fits a small litter box, food, and a warm sleeping spot, and it would stay in your home for up to three days. If you have other cats, you would need to have a separate room for the cat’s kennel. You might be asked to pick up the cat from the vet and later return it to the colony..
Food Suppliers transport donated food to the various feeding sites, particularly to colonies that are being fed and monitored by dedicated caregivers on limited incomes.
Fundraising and Educating
As much as FoFF needs volunteers for hands-on cat care, the organization simply couldn’t keep going without cold, hard cash to meet the expenses of providing food, litter, and medical care. A small cadre of dedicated and generous veterinarians throughout southern Maine provides FoFF cats with significant discounts on their treatment, but the remaining fee still must be paid, and the need for food and litter is ongoing.
FoFF also does much to educate the public about the nature of feral cats and the value of Trap-Neuter-Release for controlling feral cat populations in our communities. We do this through publishing and mailing a newsletter, maintaining a website, and distributing brochures, which is costly.
Here are areas within fundraising where you could help to keep FoFF up and running:
Click on arrow ( > ) to open/close.
FoFF has an inventory of cat-related items (such as T-shirts, crafts, and cat toys) to sell at various fundraising sites (pet stores, craft fairs, country fairs, cat shows, and feed stores). Tablers attend these sites to sell items and educate interested people about the work that FoFF does.
Annual fundraising events throughout the year include the May Perennial Sale, the June Book Sale, and the August Yard Sale. Collectors gather perennials from friends and other donors whose gardens, libraries, and basements might need some thinning; salespeople sell these items at the fundraising events.
We publish a variety of communication materials including a newsletter, website, e-notices, posters, and brochures, and are always in need of people experienced in communications who can help out with the development of these materials.
Writers needed to prepare adoptable cat descriptions, newsletter articles, and website content.
Designers needed — ideally those experienced with Adobe design and production software (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver).
Photographers needed to shoot good, strong photographs of adoptable cats and volunteer activities. (Videographers are also needed for shooting and editing website content)
Office Location
651 Forest Ave.Portland, ME 04103
2nd floor of the Odd Fellows Building at Woodford’s CornerMail To:
P.O. Box 8137Portland, ME 04104
- (207) 797-3014
- (Fax) 207-699-4399
- Email (office@feralfelines.net)