FOBVK now Friends of Bay Village Community Cats

Friends of Bay Village Community Cats is looking for volunteers to foster kittens.

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Friends of the Bay Village Kennel (FOBVK) has changed its name to Friends of Bay Village Community Cats. We have contemplated the name change for a long time.

FOBVK was incorporated in 2010 to help provide shelter and veterinary care for homeless pets until permanent homes were found, promote spay/neutering and TNR (trap neuter return), and support animal rescue. At that time, the Bay Village kennel temporarily sheltered both cats and dogs, and FOBVK supported the kennel as a means to helping Bay Village’s lost, stray and homeless pets.

However, in August 2011, Bay Village changed its animal control policies: generally, dogs were kept in the kennel no longer than overnight before transfer to the Cuyahoga County Kennel and cats were on their own. These policies continue.

Over time, our involvement with the kennel steadily decreased but the need to provide services on behalf of lost, stray, and community cats increased. Since FOBVK reorganized in February 2021, we have responded to calls from more than 60 households involving more than 100 cats.

Sometimes, all a resident needed was the loan of a humane trap to recover a lost pet. Often the problem was more complicated: community cats turning up in backyards, sometimes with kittens. Friends of Bay Village Community Cats is not a rescue organization, although we can help residents locate a rescue organization and care for a friendly cat until the rescue has space to take the cat.

Community cats live among us but do not have “owners.” They may be lost, stray, or unsocialized homeless cats, but unless they are neutered their population will increase rapidly. Most shelters are full, and adult cats especially have a very hard time being adopted even if friendly. Unsocialized cats are unadoptable.

Friends of Bay Village Community Cats helps residents TNR cats on their property. When a cat is neutered as part of a TNR program its left ear is tipped to let others know the cat has been neutered. For more information on TNR, visit  clevelandapl.org and click on Programs, Services & Resources.

Successful TNR requires planning, patience, and luck, especially when kittens are involved. Residents need to feed cats and kittens at a specific time and place for a while because the trapper needs to know where the cats will be, and the cats need to be looking for food, for trapping to be successful.

If kittens are involved, they need to be taken care of and there are many possibilities, but the momcat needs to be neutered in any circumstance. If kittens are at the right age and a foster is available, they can be removed, socialized, and placed with a rescue organization for adoption into a forever home.

If the kittens are too young to be separated from the momcat, the best plan is waiting until the kittens are a little older. If the kittens are too old to be easily socialized, they are probably big enough to be TNR’d. A kitten may be TNR’d when it is at least 8 weeks old and weighs 2 pounds.

We are a small, all-volunteer 501(c)(3) organization, and we rely on your support. We could really use volunteers: to help with TNR, to maintain our Facebook page and help us communicate better with the community, and to foster kittens. We are limited in how many kittens we can rescue primarily by the shortage of kitten fosters.

Please contact us if you know of cats in need. Maybe we can help. Message us through Facebook, facebook.com/FriendsBVCC, or call 216-925-0534 and leave a message.