We were lucky to catch up with Jessica Vigos recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jessica, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with talking about how you serve the underserved, because in our view this is one of the most important things the small business community does for society – by serving those who the giant corporations ignore, small business helps create a more inclusive and just world for all of us.
Much like there are minority or underserved human groups. There are also underserved animal groups in animal welfare. These underserved populations would include seniors, special needs, and medical cases.
These animals are often overlooked because they don’t fit the ideal image of being the perfect adoptable animal often times this population of animals needs extensive commitment or a longer recovery time (fosters homes are great for this!) to bring them back to health.
What we often know to be true, is that this population of animals that end up in our shelter system have had little to no medical care in their lives often due to financial challenges of previous owners, lack of education on feline health needs or neglect and abandonment.
Often times it is hard for people to see an animal in bad condition, people will say things like “oh you should euthanize the animal”, “oh, they are suffering”, but ultimately what we find is that receiving veterinarian care, the proper kind of mental and emotional support along with feline specific enrichment and care these animals make complete transformations..
This population of feline friends means so much to us because they truly are the perfectly imperfect. Whiskers works to change the stigma that elderly animals, special needs friends or those in great need of medical care can’t be brought back to health on to become happy adoptable, cherished family members.
Helping our feline friends who have no other options, seniors or special needs animals not only changes their life, but it truly helps you find your soul.
Whiskers also helps many feline friends who do not have medical issues and are young but often come from dire situations so you can help those more needy animals by simply adopting one of our cat friends!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am the founder of Whiskers rescue, founded in 2018. I had spent a number of years working in our shelter systems and doing trap neuter return in the community for free roaming cats. Time and time again, I seen senior cats, medical cases, and special needs animals or elderly community cats that needed to retire, be overlooked in our shelter systems or be euthanized due to lack of resources to help them. Our shelters are seriously under funded and not an ideal environment for animals who need special or extensive recovery. It’s something that drastically needs to change in our society. Shelters were originally designed to hold and euthanize animals not provide longer term solutions though many, many shelters are making great strides in a more enriching, cat savvy environment allowing more time to reduce stress, providing cat rooms vs. kennels only and fear free handling for our feline friends.
One of the biggest barriers also for cats is that really they don’t do well in a shelter setting. This is something that is not talked about as much as it should be. Cats by nature are absolutely terrified in a shelter setting.
Shelters were never set up to house and adopt out animals. They were set up to temporarily house and euthanize animals. I commend so many of our shelters to making huge strides towards enrichment for our feline friends, but the truth is that noisy shelters being shoved in a metal cage cared for by different people. Nothing that smells familiar to them all these things contribute to a highly stressful environment for them.
In the last decade, we have came leaps and bounds towards better understanding our feline friends. There are many false narratives that surround cats, like that they “need “ to roam outside. Think about this, cats are the only animal that people own that they just open up the door and say “good luck out there” letting them roam unsupervised, and unfortunately terrible things happen to them causing them to often be severely displaced, the lucky ones actually end up in our shelters, but sadly, the reclaim rate for cats is extremely low because it takes them along time to show up in the shelter if they make it there.
We really work to educate our community about what proper care and enrichment looks like for your feline counterparts. How to provide an enriching environment indoors, where they can thrive, making catios accessible, harness training and spending supervised outdoor time with them just like you would your pet dog is so important for changing their lives and helping more of our feline friends.
It is a huge problem in Utah right now and across the country really, there are literally hundreds of thousands cats that are displaced, that are not fixed, roaming and that fill our shelters with kittens every year.
We take hundreds of cats every year that previously were abandoned or lived outside and overall not any of them want to return to an outdoor life. Of course, this does not include under socialized free roaming friends who are needing our support by having a caregiver and who really are best being spayed and neutered and cared for in their outdoor home. These kitties still need our help and care.
One of the things that we are most proud about at Whiskers is how we work not just to adopt out animals but find the right fit for that specific or individual animals. We spend time with them and get to know what their individual needs are because at the end of the day each one of them is different.
We work to educate our community and even our adoptive homes on dietary needs, environmental needs and how to provide an enriching environment for them.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
Well, of course, this applies to being a rescue not necessarily selling animals, but adopting them out
I would say one of our biggest wins is always when we have a senior kitty that has some health conditions. This could be kidney disease, heart, disease, or a much younger kitty with a special mobility need.
It is always so amazing when we meet an individual who is wanting to open their heart and home to one of our feline friends with one of the conditions. People are afraid to have their heart broken, people are afraid of the unknown basically, but when you get past all of the unknown possibilities and can just see that individual animal who truly needs you and truly needs someone to share their heart with them, it’s the most amazing experience you can possibly have. Loving an animal that you work hard to keep them in good health , that you make adjustments to your routine or life to care for truly not only gives them a special gift but you learn so much about yourself spending time with animals like this. We meet the most incredible humans who open their heart and home to these special kids!
How did you build your audience on social media?
Whiskers is completely donor funded. We rely on donations from our community, from grants that we apply for and from people who believe in the population of animals that we are serving. We are continually telling their stories, we are very transparent about all the work we do.
I think a lot of rescues have a hard time at documenting the life-saving work that we do. It’s really important to be able to track your numbers, to show your work. It’s so important to be able to build your social media platform by showing what those animals look like when they first come to you versus what they look like after they have received proper care. For any type of engagement or platform it’s so important to continually tell your story, to show what you’re doing, to alway be professional and share thoughtful, well written posts. Speaking to a broad audience requires practice and in our world it can increase life-saving efforts.
Luckily, we have a couple amazing social media volunteers who really work to try and get our name out there, tell the stories of our work and build our brand. Follow our FaceBook page or IG @whiskersutah!
And always provide a way to give, buy or in our case adopt or donate to support our work!
Donations can be made at whiskersutah.org or Venmo @whiskersutah
We appreciate your support!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Whiskersutah.org
- Instagram: @whiskersutah
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WhiskersUtah?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Image Credits
Erin McMullen
Meka Hilton
Amanda Kirk
Sarah Kitchas
Alexandria Conde