Feline Fall Festival assembles shelters for community cats

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – Cold weather is coming, but Humane Fort Wayne invites the community to their clinic on Saturday to help ensure community cats, or strays, keep warm.

The annual Feline Fall Festival assembles 150 portable, insulated shelters for more than 16,000 free-roaming cats in Allen County. Melissa Gibson, community relations manager for Humane Fort Wayne says the event is “a whole lot of fun work,” supporting felines who aren’t pets, but could use a home for themselves.

“They may prefer to be outside,” Gibson said. “They may be friendly, they may be feral … but they do have caretakers, and caring for those cats over the winter months can save these cats from, honestly, freezing to death.”

Shelters are created out of storage bins laid with straw for warmth and insulated with Styrofoam on all four sides. A hole is cut in the side for a make shift cat door, and a sticker reading “Home Sweet Community Cat Home” is pasted on the front. Volunteers who are able to help create these shelters are gifted one of their own to house their local community cat.

Gibson said the Feline Fall Festival goes beyond the shelter’s $45 TNR, or trap, neuter, release, services and provides another way of getting residents of Allen County involved in the health and well being of outdoor cats.

The Feline Fall Festival run son Saturday from noon to 3 p.m. at Humane Fort Wayne’s Clinic located at 1333 Maycrest Dr. The event is free. Raffles, caricature drawings and information booths on the shelter’s Community Cat Program are available.

To register for the event, visit the link . To learn more about Humane Fort Wayne’s Community Cat program, visit the shelter’s website .

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