Hello, friends and fellow neighbors. And thank you for joining us.
Whether you may be joining me today is Lisa Lende Lender.
She is the secretary of the homeless Cat
Management team here in Western Pennsylvania, Lisa. I know you got a busy day.
So thank you for taking some time out of your day to be with us.
Well, thank you for including me and inviting me today.
No problem Lisa. So uh what is um what is the mission of H CMT?
And uh why did it get started?
So homeless cat management team, we've been in existence since, since 1998.
And our mission, in my opinion
is to reduce the population of cats humanely.
So we want to do that by fixing them so that they're not reproducing.
We do about 1000 cats per year.
So to date, we've done about 25,000 fixes spay and Neuters.
Today, we have a clinic
and at our clinic today, we're gonna have about 60
60 to 65 cats that we're gonna fix high quality,
high volume, low cost.
Today is actually a free clinic because it's sponsored by uh by a great person
who um who's donated to us,
what has been uh HCNTS impact um on the uh community.
So, we've had a huge impact in every cat that we touch and that we're able to treat,
we get them fixed
will rabies vaccinate.
We also uh provide flea treatment,
ear mite treatment and uh any other issues,
we do uh a quick medical check to ensure that there's no problems with the cat.
Once they're returned to their colony or if they're returned to their owner,
they're much better.
So you're gonna have male cats that are not spraying,
you're gonna have male cats and female cats that are not fighting,
you're not gonna have kittens.
So we have just a profound positive effect on the,
the community with every cat that we touch.
What do you do with the attached that I'll come through here?
So, uh, in order to get admitted to the clinic,
people have to preregister their cats.
So that would be,
uh either calling or, um, signing up using our email address or via our website.
And we can only accommodate about 60 to 80 cats at a clinic.
So, um, we're limited,
but we, um, when we get a cat, when we bring a cat in,
they're admitted to the clinic
and then they're anesthetized,
then they get their surgery
and um, they get all their shots either, uh, during the prep process or post
op process,
then they're put back into their car carriers or tracks
and then we ensure that they are recovering well and then they get checked out.
So the whole process takes, um,
depending on whether it's a male or a female,
but it could take anywhere between an hour or two.
what kind of surgeries do you guys ever done?
So, we do primarily spay and neuters,
but sometimes we'll have a cat that comes in that has, um, a bad
cut, like it could have gotten attack by a raccoon or
another animal.
And in that case, we'll um we'll wrap up the skin, we'll sew it back together.
We have removed legs, we have removed eyes,
we have removed uh part parts of tails based on, you know, the cat, if it has like,
you know, gangrene in its leg, I mean, there's,
there's certain things that you have to do.
So we'll do that. We do it during our clinic days.
What do people have to do if they are interested in volunteering?
So we're always looking for volunteers at homeless cat management team.
Um We have a number of different opportunities
so it could be volunteering at the clinics.
We have a clinic about every other week,
uh always on a Saturday
and we, we are always looking for morning volunteers and afternoon volunteers.
And we, we provide training.
We also look for vet
techs and veterinarians um for volunteering
because we uh we have a number of them that we need for our clinics
then outside of the clinics, we also do fundraising.
Now with COVID, we are, we, we actually had to cancel a lot of our fundraisers.
So that hurts us financially.
But um
we do have outreach events that we participate in probably about 10 or 12 a year.
Then we have a big spaghetti dinner.
We have to cancel that, that was supposed to be held in May.
Um But we are always looking for volunteers for those activities.
And then the other thing is we also look for help with trapping.
So, trappers are hard to um hard to find and we will provide training
on how to trap as well.
Where can people um go if, if,
if they would like to sign up so they can go to our website.
It's homeless cat management team.
Um Homeless cat dot org is the actual uh address of our website
where you could just do a Google search on homeless cat management team.
And um in there we have uh we volunteer opportunities.
What does it mean to you to live like president?
So, um Fred Rogers, I grew up watching him
and um he was just a great person and his
uh his untimely death, I think he was 74. Like he just missed out
uh on more life because
he was always a caring person and uh an awesome teacher
and he was really a man ahead of his time.
Uh
So,
uh because of him I do a lot of volunteer work.
Of course, my parents also were wonderful volunteers and so I learned from them,
but
I've been volunteering for homeless cab for 22 years.
What makes a snappy new day for you, Lisa
getting as many cats fixed as possible?
Uh It's my passion. I love to get cats fixed.
I help uh a number of different people outside of our homeless cat clinics
to get cats fixed. Um I I think the
value of that is elevating the status of cats by reducing the population humanely,
Lisa. Thank you so much for, for being here today.
You're doing such amazing work and we wish you nothing
but the best with HC MD in the future.
Thank you so much Colton for spending the time with me today.