Events
Won’t you be my sweetie? Vote for me!
This is truly a gorgeous photo! Elton’s mom, Ellie, adopted a buddy for Elton from us. Miss Cleo was a Black and Orange Cat Foundation kitty before she joined Elton and Ellie in their home. Thank you, Ellie, for thinking of us and posting this photo for the contest. It is beautiful and perfect for Valentine’s Day!
If you’d like to vote for this Cassanova Gentleman, go to: Vote for Elton
Biggie Smalls will give you some snuggle time if you vote for him!
I haven’t quite figured out the connection Black and Orange has to Biggie Smalls. His mom, Lynnda, lists her home town as Chicago, IL. She also says in the posting about “Biggs” that he was returned to the rescue organization she adopted him from two times before she took him home with her. She thanks those other people for not keeping him.
To vote for Biggie Smalls (I love that name!), go to: Biggie is Best!
Two other Black and Orange kitties also made it into the contest thanks to mom and foster mom, Kristin.
The first is our famous food bandit, Stewie. You can see this same appealing face peeking out at you from the pages of Petfinder where the “Stew-meister” is still looking for his forever home.
Come on, how can you resist this little pink nose? Vote for the food bandit!
To give Stewie your vote (although he would prefer a piece of pasta), go to: Food Bandits Forever!
The final entry is Kristin’s cat, Angus, who used to be a B and O kitty before she and Christina adopted him and his sister, Moo Moo. These two really lucked out. They came from a trailer park where we have been helping the cats since 2005 when we worked with CATco on a grant to spay and neuter the cats there. We’ve kept in contact with the people who trapped kitties for us at the trailer park and they call whenever new un-sterilized cats show up. Angus and Moo Moo were from a litter of kittens produced by a wandering Siamese cat. We got their mom (and dad) fixed and found these two the best home ever!
How can you resist? Vote for the coolest cat on here...ME!
To Vote for Angus, go to: Cool Cats Rule.
To see all the entries in the 2010 Spay Day Photo Contest whose votes benefit Black and Orange, visit: Vote for these photos and help B and O!
Remember, each vote costs $1 and you must vote a minimum of five times or $5. But all that money comes back to Black and Orange! So Go VOTE!
Suki says, "Vote for me and help Black and Orange. My favorite group!"
One of our super volunteers, Kristin Ramsdell, submitted this photo for the Online Spay Day 2010 photo contest. Kristin does so much for Black and Orange from cleaning cages at PetSmart to fostering our kitties and manning our table at adoption events. Kristin is also the person who took it upon herself to save Lydia when she was lost outside for three weeks.
Beyond her rescue endeavors, Kristin is also a wonderful photographer. When I take pictures of the foster cats for Petfinder, they are usually running to try to get away from me or I’ve caught them, unsuspecting, doing something cute. Kristin’s photos of the fosters she and Christina care for are works of art. Take a look at the pictures of Stewie, Maggie, and Lydia on Petfinder and I am sure you’ll see what I mean. The cats are looking at her with soulful expressions or contemplating views from the cat tree. They always look peaceful and profound.
So vote for Suki and help spread the word about our volunteer photographer’s talents!
To Vote for Suki: Suki Must Win
Thank you, Kristin, for another gorgeous photo to help Black and Orange’s kitties!
Gulliver says, "Vote for me and help Black and Orange Cat Foundation!"
The official Spay Day 2010 Online Photo Contest started today and we already have two entries submitted for people to vote on. Both photos were taken by Ginya Johnson, who used to be our favorite vet tech at Northstar with Dr. West. Ginya is now in Mount Vernon, still rescuing animals (her beagle/pom rescue puppies, Timothy, Chubby, Rosie, and Blacky, have almost found homes from being listed on our Petfinder site) and working in a vet hospital there. She loves photography and the photos she sends us of her rescues are always gorgeous.
To vote for Gulliver, follow this link: I Love Gulliver
Ginya also entered a photo of her dog Havannah in the contest.
To vote for Havannah, follow this link: I’m Voting for Havannah
Each vote costs $1 and you can vote a minimum of 5 times or $5. Of course, you can vote more than that, too. And every dollar you spend on a vote comes directly to Black and Orange Cat Foundation.
Please vote for Gulliver and Havannah and we’ll keep you posted on any other pictures whose vote money comes to us. And if Ginya’s photos win, she also gets great prizes for being such a sweet person (and a Great Photographer!).
Thank you, Ginya, for gorgeous photos!
No, vote for me, Havannah! I'm prettier!
The Animal Rescue Site, along with Petfinder.com, is conducting a new $100,000 Shelter Challenge which lasts from January 18 through April 18. The grand prize is $10,000 and there will be lots of other grants awarded, as well, to the rescue groups or shelters with the most votes.
All you have to do, and most of you are very familiar with this, is click to help rescued animals by going to the Animal Rescue Site: Click to Give here
Once you click on the purple button that says, “Click Here to Give–It’s Free!” you will be taken to a new page. At the top of that page will be a box that says, “Vote Today!” Click on that box and then choose “Black and Orange Cat Foundation” as the group you would like to vote for. You can find us by typing in our name and the city and state, Plain City, Ohio.
Remember, you do have to Vote EVERY DAY! And thank you for voting for Black and Orange Cat Foundation!
Noah’s Ark Veterinary Hospital will be celebrating their official grand opening the week of February 8-14. There will be tons of activities going on where you can meet the staff and tour the state-of-the-art facility. You can enter drawings to win free products and there will be a Lovable Adoptables Event for the Valentine’s weekend, featuring Colony Cats and the Franklin County Dog Shelter on Saturday the 13th from 12-6 pm and Columbus Dog Connection and Black and Orange Cat Foundation from 10 am-4 pm on Sunday the 14th.
Tours will be available every day from 8 am-6 pm. On Tuesday, February 9, beginning at 2 pm, the Dublin K9 unit will be performing demonstrations.
To keep up on all the activities during their grand opening, visit Noah’s Ark web site: http://noahsarkvethosp.com/
Noah’s Ark is open Monday to Friday 8 am-6 pm and Saturday from 8 am-12 pm. However, they offer after hours emergency care 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. If you have an emergency, just call the office, which is staffed after hours, and a vet will meet you to take care of your pet. Their number is 614-761-8400.
The office is located in Muirfield Square at the corner of Muirfield and Memorial Drives, 6001 Memorial Drive, in Dublin. They feature laser surgery, digital radiology, dental services, ultrasound, acupuncture, and super, friendly service from their wonderful staff and veterinarians.
To read more about them, and to receive 50% off your first office visit, click on the “client letter” below. When you bring it up, click on it again to enlarge it to read. You can then print it out to get the discount for your first visit.
We will see you on Valentine’s Day from 10-6 and we hope you will find your sweetheart from among our kitties!
Spay Day 2010 is coming! The 16th annual Spay Day will be Tuesday, February 23. The annual event, held the last Tuesday of February, was originally started by the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL) in 1995. The event became a program of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in 2006 when they joined forces with DDAL.
During the month of February, events and activities take place throughout the nation and around the world to inspire people to spay and neuter pets and feral cats. Organizations that participate in a Spay Day event are eligible to take part in the Online Pet Photo Contest that begins Wednesday, January 20.
I wanted to let all our amateur photo buffs know about this contest a little early so they could begin snapping pictures now. On January 20, you can upload a photo and enter the contest. People can then vote for your photo by purchasing a minimum of five votes at $1 per vote or $5. When you upload your photo, you can designate Black and Orange Cat Foundation to receive the photo’s vote money. So the better your photo, the more votes (and money) we can receive. Or you can also pass the word that you’ve entered a photo and that the vote money comes to us so others will vote for it. The winning photographers will also win prizes, too. The last day to enter the contest with a picture will be February 26 and the last day to vote will be March 4.
To find out more about the contest, visit the site: Online Spay Day Photo Contest
Our Spay Day event is a “Spay-ghetti” dinner being held on Saturday, February 20 in conjunction with the Humane Society of Madison County. The dinner will be from 5-7 (or 8, we haven’t quite decided) p.m. at Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church’s Parish Activity Center (the PAC), located at 670 West Main Street in Plain City (behind the fire station). We’ll have spay-ghetti, with or without meatballs, salad, rolls, and a beverage. We also plan to have a bake sale of “human” desserts, as well as delicious dog treats. The proceeds from this event will allow us to host a low cost spay and neuter clinic at the Humane Society of Madison County’s new “Neuterville” surgery suite.
To find Spay Day activities in your area (if you can’t come to Plain City for our “Spay-ghetti” Dinner), visit the Spay Day Web site and put in your zip code at the bottom of the page to find activities near you: Spay Day Events
If you’d like to get involved in a Spay Day event near you by volunteering, donating, or even taking animals in for low cost spay and neuter, visit Spay Day 2010.
I am so excited! Today in my email, I had the label proof for the wine, Kitten’s Kiss, that is going to be produced by Eldchrist Winery here in Plain City. The label features the winery kittens, B and Mittens, two white kitties who are brothers. Mittens is actually a polydactyl or Hemingway cat, having an extra toe on his front paws. (As an aside, Hemingway cats get their name from Ernest Hemingway, the writer, who had many multi-toed cats. He was a huge cat lover. You can still see descendants of his original cats at his former home in Key West or if a visit is not in the cards, check out the web site here: Hemingway Home).
Anyway, back to Eldchrist Winery, which I am sure Mr. Hemingway would have visited if he had lived in the area since he was a huge fan of spirits (the alcoholic version, not the ghostly sort). Eldchrist Winery has kindly offered to host a benefit event for Black and Orange to launch the wine. We’ll have more information on that as soon as we set a date. For each bottle of Kitten’s Kiss wine sold, Eldchrist has also offered to make a donation to Black and Orange Cat Foundation!
We helped B and Mittens get neutered and vaccinated over the summer as the Winery was first getting started. It was a very nice surprise when winery owner, Christopher Eldredge, approached us about a wine featuring the kitties to benefit Black and Orange.
If you click on the label above, it will take you to the proof. Click on that a second time and it should pull up a larger version of the image so you can read the text on the label. But in case you don’t want to do that, here is what it says, “Our Kitten’s Kiss wine exhibits sweet grapefruit flavors. B and Mittens were stray kittens that now live at Eldchrist Winery. The Black and Orange Cat Foundation specializes in spaying and neutering stray & feral cats in the area. They helped out our kitties! A donation to Black and Orange Cat Foundation will be made for each bottle of Eldchrist Kitten’s Kiss wine sold.” They then list our contact info.
To find out more about Eldchrist Winery, please visit their web site, www.eldchrist.com
We’ll let you know more about the release of this wine as soon as we have more information.
At that time, we’ll also tell you, “Drink Up!”
If you have never heard of this, I’d like to encourage you to participate in a really neat project that Dogs Deserve Better does each Valentine’s Day. For the Have a Heart for Chained Dogs Valentine Campaign, Dogs Deserve Better (DDB) sends out Valentines to chained and penned dogs. Mailed along with the Valentine is a brochure about bringing dogs into the home and freeing them from their chained existence, as well as a coupon for a dog treat.
Last year, Dogs Deserve Better, whose mission focuses on freeing dogs from chained and penned lives, sent out 12,000 Valentines. The goal for 2010 is 15,000 Valentines. In order to do that, DDB needs you!
First of all, they need you to make Valentines for the dogs. If you are a teacher, a student, a group leader (4-H, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts) or someone homeschooling their children, this is a great service project to teach kindness to animals. The Valentines should be no larger than 4″ by 8.5″ so they can fit into an envelope to be mailed. DDB is stressing Quality over Quantity–they want really neat Valentines that will make people think. You can visit their web site to see some of the cool Valentines people made in 2009 and also to download high resolution chained dog images to use on your own Valentines. All Valentines must be mailed to Dogs Deserve Better, P. O. Box 23, Tipton, PA 16684 by February 5.
Secondly, DDB needs coupons for free or reduced cost treats or dog food. They are aiming at having a coupon to go with every Valentine, so 15,000 coupons. You can mail coupons to the same address: P. O. Box 23, Tipton, PA 16684.
And finally, DDB needs to know who to send these Valentines to. If you know of a chained or penned dog in your area (we have all seen them–the poor dogs that look miserable in summer heat and bring tears to our eyes when they are covered in drifts of snow), please find the addresses for those dogs and either email them to info@dogsdeservebetter.org, call the info in at 877-636-1408, or go online and fill out the information via a form on the web site: www.dogsdeservebetter.org. YOU WILL REMAIN ANONYMOUS!
You can also sponsor the cost of sending 15,000 Valentines by making a donation to Dogs Deserve Better online or by mailing a check to the address listed above. You can also purchase really neat Valentine merchandise when you visit the site to learn how to participate in the 2010 Valentine Campaign.
We should all have a heart for chained dogs!
Queen Jezebelle commands Santa to do her bidding!
We want to thank Santa Chuck for being the classiest Santa ever! We even had several PetSmart employees tell us that out of all the rescue groups who participated in the photos with Santa Paws event this year, we had the best Santa. And we have to agree!
We took over fifty photos with Santa. Pictures ranged from lots of happy dogs, some children, a two week old baby (and the proud black lab brother), several cats and even two guinea pigs.
No snakes this year, but we did have some roving guinea pigs!
The nicest story, however, was the dog from Afghanistan. A lady brought the dog in because he has been in a kennel for the past three months while his family, who are in the military, are away in Afghanistan. His family had actually found him while they were stationed in the country and shipped him back to the United States. Now he was just awaiting their arrival home for Christmas in three days.
Because he has been in a kennel this whole time, this very nice lady goes to the kennel (she is friends with the owner) and takes this good boy out for excursions to PetSmart and around town to allow him to see other people and dogs. She got his photo taken as a special present for his military family when they arrive home. To say he is one lucky dog is an understatement: saved from a country at war, shipped from Afghanistan to the U.S., and then loved by a family who paid any price to bring him to their country–one lucky dog, indeed.
This lucky boy came all the way from Afghanistan to see Santa!
The award winner for the cutest pet, however, was the chihuahua in the pink coat with the drawn on eyebrows! Yes, her parents drew on eyebrows for her. Ultra chic!
Yes, you love my eyebrows, don't you?
After Santa was done with the photos with our adoring public, he kindly posed with each of the cats in the adoption room at PetSmart. When he asked them what they wanted for Christmas, they all unanimously agreed that they would like to find their forever families this holiday season.
Miss Jezebelle, our long termer and Queen, only allowed us to present her to Santa in her little bed. Jez loves to sleep in her cozy cube, so she could not be made to leave it on our silly human whim. We bundled her up like a kitty burrito and sat her on Santa’s lap. Please do think about giving this girl a home if you are looking for a kitty as 2009 ends.
We hope all the kitties at PetSmart get exactly what they wished for from Santa Chuck this holiday!
Santa assures Lydia that, yes, she will get her wonderful forever family very, very soon!
It looked like Christmas morning with all the goodies piled around the tree--only these were donations for pets in need!!
We just want to thank everyone who came out for the pet supply drive at Camp Bow Wow on Nike Drive in Hilliard. We could not believe how generous people were. The flow of people backing up to the door, cars and trucks loaded down with dog and cat food, was never ending. Even as one vehicle pulled away, another was pulling up.
We loaded two vehicles and the front room at Camp Bow Wow was still packed. When we first got there, there was no room to walk. By the time the two cars were loaded, the room had filled back up again. People are so kind!
Loaded down and ready to go!!
We got all the food over to the area we have designated as The Pet Pantry, the empty unit next to Plain City Druggist, 480 South Jefferson Avenue in Plain City. If you know anyone who needs help with food, please have them call us. We already alerted the Madison County Dog Warden, Deputy Sheriff Gary Kronk to send people in need our way. Our goal is to keep pets in their homes by allowing families to have the resources they need to keep them in these economic times.
One of Columbus Dog Connection's adoptable pups hopes that some of the goodies are for him this Christmas.
We also want to thank Lori Thelen, owner of Camp Bow Wow, for offering the use of her business for the drop off point for the pet supply drive. Lori wanted us to let everyone know that they can continue to drop off items at Camp Bow Wow and she will pass the stuff on to us to distribute.
We want to thank Columbus Dog Connection, as well, for helping with the event. They came out in full force to help unload vehicles, stack bags of dog and cat food, and act as work horses when we loaded up the vehicles. Some items will also be given to area rescues, including Columbus Dog Connection.
When we left Camp Bow Wow, at almost 2 pm, at the end of the pet supply drive, there were still people coming to drop off items. On our way home, we made a stop to give items to one of our regulars, Michele, who needed cat food and litter. Michele is also great about passing along items to other families who need help in her apartment complex.
Again, thank you from the bottom of our hearts to everyone who made December 12 such a super day for area pets!!
To see more photos from the event, visit the Black and Orange Cat Foundation Facebook site and become one of our fans!