Trap-Neuter-Return non-profit Bushwick Street Cats is in need of foster parents to accommodate a growing number of unhoused Bushwick street cats. BSC Treasurer Chris Glazier points out to Bushwick Daily that in the past they haven’t needed to constantly outsource foster homes but that the overflow happens “pretty much all the time these days.”
BSC recruits foster parents via Petfinder, Adopt-a-Pet, Craigslist, Instagram, Facebook, and joins weekly adoption events in Williamsburg.
Immediately aware of the overflowing cat population ubiquitous with Bushwick streets after Glazier and BSC President (and Glazier’s domestic partner) Jeannie Purvis moved to Bushwick in 2006, the two took in a pregnant kitten named Lucy. After Lucy gave birth and they adopted her litter out, Purvis and Glazier started the process again with more unhoused cats in the neighborhood. “Back in those days [the ASPCA] charged $25 per cat to fix,” says Glazier.
Glazier and Purvis made connections with New York-based animal and environmental advocacy organization Empty Cages Collective via Flickr (remember, dear readers, this was 2006), which helped make BSC a TNR organization to be reckoned with: “We borrowed traps and through ECC’s connections with the ASPCA, Humane Society of NY and The Toby Project, we started fixing all the cats we could catch,” tells Glazier.
In addition to Glazier and Purvis are Secretary Alice Mackenzie and Boardmember Janice Purvis, though in the same breath Glazier points out that “we have tons of sub-fosters and other people who are tacit members.”
BSC and other local cat adoption and advocacy organizations regularly support each other’s efforts and Glazier tells Bushwick Daily that “we share info and resources, borrow traps and cages from each other, pick each other’s cats up from the spay clinic, cat-sit, you name it.”
BSC’s most consistent assistant comes from Thundercats TNR and North Brooklyn Cats, and they also work closely with Whiskers-a-Go-Go, A Tail of Two Kitties, Bedford Corners Community Cats, FAT Cats, “and several individual people who haven’t yet thought up clever names for their own organizations.”
BSC tries their best to mitigate the cat population on the streets and encourages the Bushwick community and elsewhere to get TNR certified or to help in any way that they can, adding that “if we could get one cohort on every block in Bushwick, we’d have the cat population controlled overnight.”
Featured image courtesy of Bushwick Street Cats