Cat Rescue of Marlborough and Hudson: Cat Enrichment Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

This grant is one that will continue to benefit our cats for a long time. We were able to buy so many enrichment items for our fosters, and it allows us to focus on the cats and not have to spend more time and effort fundraising. We were able to purchase cat trees, corrugated scratchers, a playscape, and, unexpectedly, a cat exercise wheel.

Our more dedicated and long-time fosters were in dire need of some new cat trees. As predicted, kitten season was very high-volume and they got a lot of great use out of the new scratchers -- one success story is highlighted below. Lastly, because a cat tree was unexpectedly donated to us, we were able to acquire an exercise wheel, which is particularly beneficial to our longer-time cats at our intake shelter, getting them more movement and letting them get out some pent-up energy.

How many pets did this grant help?

200

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Apollo was part of a litter but was not thriving. He needed to be syringe-fed to survive. Eventually he made a turn around and is now a very large and active boy.

His best friend Nyla was surrendered to us under suspicious circumstances. We believe she may have been used for breeding at a very early age and perhaps somewhat unsuccessfully.

Regardless of their rough beginnings, they both made full use of the trees and scratchers. The first photo shows them in their favorite tree at a rare moment when they weren’t scrambling around it chasing each other. They were both adopted, and are inseparable and living their best lives.

Gronk (second photo) came to us as a 2-day-old kitten from a local animal control officer, perhaps abandoned by his mother. He’s being bottle-fed around the clock and is doing great! He actually seems to be ahead of kittens at this age and is already loving the scratchers. He’s not up for adoption yet; it’ll be another month or so until he’s big enough for surgery, but he’ll be one of the most friendly, hand-raised kittens ever, and will be claimed quickly!