We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Colony Cat Club Detroit a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Colony Cat Club , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.

Colony Cat Club Detroit focuses mostly on TNR (trap, neuter, return) for stray and feral cats in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park.

These communities are absolutely underserved, and we provide our services for free to the community, utilizing donations and fundraisers.

The human population of Detroit was 633k in 2023. According to the US Census Bureau, 33.8% of the population of Detroit was living in poverty (2022), which was defined as earning $13,590 or less a year for an individual.

The city is overrun by cats, and we hear time and time again from concerned citizens who are heartbroken from finding cats deceased in the street, or are feeding cats before they feed themselves.

To say the stray cat crisis is just an animal issue is ridiculous. This is a human rights issue, too. Cats fighting for resources can damage property, and people who are struggling to make ends meet can’t necessarily afford to spay and neuter an entire colony that is inhabiting their neighborhood. That’s where we come in.

Our TNR program successfully stops the neverending litters of kittens. It also reduces or completely eliminates fighting, spraying, spread of disease and other less desirable traits from cats in heat. Fixed cats prevent new, unfixed cats from joining the colony, which keeps the colony size manageable. We also have a lot of neighbors who love the cats for pest control, and TNR’d cats still earn their keep that way.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit cat rescue that formed in 2023 because of the need for more humane options to combat the stray cat crisis in Detroit.

Although our main focus is TNR, we also take in adoptable cats and kittens from the street. We are 100% foster based, and plan to get a brick and mortar shelter in the future. We also provide medical assistance for stray cats in need, food for residents to help maintain their colonies, and winter shelters for outdoor colony cats. These resources are limited, but we do our best to fundraise both supplies and money. All of our proceeds go back to the community.

We are cat and community focused. As a board, we continually redirect our focus to remain cat centered. We are currently working on getting more veterinary services available to us, specifically for TNR. The average cost for one colony cat to get spayed/neutered, vaccinated and eartipped is $25-$35. While that is an incredible price, we have tens of thousands (probably more) of stray cats in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park. There are not currently any city funded programs to address this problem, and very few vets that offer the services.

We are also working with larger animal advocate groups and local government to start prioritizing cat welfare. We are trying to help get a humane pet store ordinance passed in Detroit which will prohibit the sales of cats and dogs in pet stores for profit. We have appointed a government liaison on our board, and have started branching out to work with other organizations to strengthen our individual missions and become more unified to end the cat crisis together.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Consistency.

We are consistent with our message, and we are unbiased when we make decisions.

A great example would be regarding which cats we choose to bring into our rescue for adoption. While we would absolutely love to bring every single cat and kitten inside, it would be impossible to do so. There are significantly more cats outside than we could ever reasonably get adopted. We believe that all cats are deserving of a better life, regardless of their age, what they look like, or how healthy they are. We also do not entertain people paying for a spot to get cats in with us. We do not ask people to make donations for help, and we do not prioritize people who suggest that they will.

We were once approached to take in two purebred cats, but in this specific situation, there were several reasons it would have been unethical to do so. Although we knew we would be able to get them adopted immediately, we chose to stay true to our mission and offer the owner several other resources to pursue.

We won’t be swayed by outside factors. Our board has become very strong, and we rely on each other to make sound and practical decisions. There are times that we might go a little off course as individuals, but we all have the same mission in mind and are eager to support each other to get there.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Our entire team is currently 100% volunteer. That includes everyone: our co-founders, vetting coordinator, treasurer, adoption and foster coordinators, events coordinator, government liaison, TNR team, events team, fosters, and so on. They are all volunteering their time because they love cats and believe in our mission.

Maintaining high morale is tricky. We have had so many wins as an organization, but our losses can be extremely heavy. When we refer to loss in animal welfare, we are typically referring to actual death. During kitten season, we are inundated with high risk kittens who are often pulled from unimaginable circumstances, and it can get very dark.

First and foremost, we advocate for mental health and well-being. At the highest level, we support each other to take breaks from the rescue. That might look like turning off our phone, not replying to public outreach, and even taking some time away from contact all together.

We encourage strong boundaries. That could look like setting restrictions to when someone is “available” to be contacted, how we will allow ourselves to be talked to, or to what extent we will offer our support to any given situation. We promote consent, especially in regards to sharing someone’s personal contact information. We prioritize the boundaries that we have as individuals, and respect other people’s boundaries as well.

We encourage our fosters to take breaks between foster cats, and even support them if they decide to step away from fostering all together.

We offer support to each other and other professionals around us. That includes caring deeply for our veterinary partners and fellow animal rescuers. We also support the people we help within the community. We empathize when someone is grieving, and we hold space for them to genuinely move through their feelings.

We accept help when it’s offered, because life is about finding a balance between giving and taking. We have fun while we are hustling for the kitties by having super unique and cool adoption events.

We believe in compassion fatigue, and check in regularly with each other on a human level.

And lastly, we aren’t serious all the time. We have running jokes that have become part of our regular vocabulary. We periodically have business meetings over drinks, and watch football games together or meet up poolside. We are here because we want to change cat welfare, but no one said we have to be miserable doing it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/colonycatclub
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/colonycatclub
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/colonycatclub