We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Renae & Vita Woith & Manzoli a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Renae & Vita, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?
We both love cats! We met while volunteering for a local rescue in their kitten nursery.
After Covid, shelters’ paradigms shifted. We started hearing stories about people being turned away by their local shelters due to lack of space and resources almost daily. We realized then that the impact we could have if we tried to address the problem at its roots would be much greater. That is when we decided to focus all of our efforts on TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return), to really try and make a difference in the cat overpopulation crisis.
We sat down and looked at the greater Los Angeles area map, and quickly realized no legitimate rescue was operating in Compton. Priscilla, our very good friend from our kitten rescue days, worked there and told us how dire the situation was for community cats. Compton is a very underserved community. A lot of good hearted people care for community cats, but have no access to spay/neuter resources. This triggers a never ending cycle of kittens being born and dying on the streets. We want to try and stop that.
That is how TippedEars came to be!
Renae & Vita, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
TippedEars is a TNR based rescue who focuses on the city of Compton CA.
Trap-Neuter-Return is the only humane approach to control the cat overpopulation problem.
Our rescue answers requests from the community who cares for oudtoors cats but has no access to spay/neuter resources. First, we talk to colony caregivers and assess the cat population. Then, we come back and humanely trap outdoors cats. We transport them to the veterinary clinic, where they get spayed/neutered, vaccinated and receive flea meds. While under anesthesia, the cats also receive an eartip, that is an international sign an outdoor cat has been through a TNR program. The eartip doesn’t hurt the cats and helps trappers release them immediately if they accidentally walk into a trap again. Once the cats are recovered from surgery, we release them to their outdoors colony. While in our care, community cats also receive extra medical care if needed.
TNR has many advantages. Altered male cats stop getting into fights and spraying to mark territory. Mating and fighting noises stop. Since the cats get also vaccinated, the overall health of the colony improves.
When we have available fosters, we intake kittens and friendly cats we encounter while trapping. We also work with several other organizations in Southern California and transport cats to them so they can get adopted out and we can rescue more off the streets.
Our services are free to the community!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Once we start working a colony, we don’t stop until every last cat gets spayed or neutered. We work in close collaboration with colony caregivers, use multiple trap types, baits and methods. We also train the caregivers to use our traps to catch the last stragglers who have become trap savvy.
We started our biggest colony so far back in November 2022. We walked into a backyard and couldn’t believe how many cats lived there! We trapped there every week for months, but it was really hard to get every last one of them. The help of Victorino, the colony caregiver, was vital for us to succeed.
The very last mama cat was the toughest one to get. She kept getting pregnant and going somewhere else to have her babies! Once the babies were a bit older, she would come back to the backyard and bring the babies along to show them where the food was. Finally, just a few months ago she brought back newborns. We were able to use the babies to trap mama! Victorino held mama in a big crate with her babies until they were able to eat on their own. We intook the babies into our foster program and spayed mom and released her to the colony.
Overall, in that same colony we trapped 50 adults and intook 17 between friendly cats and kittens! We are now done, but it took us 2 whole years!
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
We met while volunteering at a local rescue, specifically in their kitten nursery.
Renae had been a volunteer there longer and she trained me (Vita) and taught me all sorts of kitten related stuff.
We especially bonded during a panleukopenia outbreak. Panleukopenia is a very contagious disease that can be fatal, especially in very young kittens. The founders of the rescue couldn’t help because they were dealing with the same type of outbreak in their own home. We braved the outbreak together. Renae taught me how to do injections and give supportive care. We took care of all the kittens and they all survived!
After that draining week, we both got even more involved. We became foster mentors to help other fosters care for their kittens, both joined the adoption team to get cats and kittens into their forever homes, managed several programs together. We realized how much we enjoyed working together and eventually decided to start our own rescue.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tippedears.org
- Instagram: tippedears
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TippedEars/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tippedears/
- Other: TikTok: @tippedears
