Most people here do not know that I foster rescued cats. My next one is coming this Saturday. Rescue work is quite rewarding, but it can be expensive, and I am poor. :) Thankfully the network of people I am working with are paying for the vet bills for this cat, and are giving me a few boxes of food. They are also absorbing the cost of advertising her when it is time for her to go to a new home

Which brings me to a problem. There are apparently many, many cats in the Illawarra that need homes, and no cat shelter. There is a network of people doing rescues, we do get vets who give us cheap desexing, we get food donated and the like, but there is no "shopfront" where people can go in and see that cats.

I cannot afford to foster many cats, even though some food is donated it does not cover all the food and costs, and I do not have the space for more than one or two spare cats at a time, yet something needs to be done. The rescue situation in the Illawarra is dire, and like I said, there is no shelter in the area. There is an RSPCA but it works more as a pound, it is the only thing close to a shelter for this quite large city and it's surrounding countryside.

I was talking to one of the ladies today who does the trapping and donates much of the cash that goes to vet bills. She knows nothing of computers and has no internet access, and has been doing all the placing of cats via ads in the local paper. The people must ring her, and she must vet them over the phone before meeting up with them. I was thinking of setting up a small website with photos of the cats and their stories. People can read about the cats, understand that many of them are "special problem" cats, read the requirements for taking one (the cats are not adopted out to just anyone who asks). As I do not have the space nor the money to foster a lot of animals, it seems to be something worthwhile I can do, seeing I do have time and some computer literacy.

I only thought of this earlier this mroning, when I was talking to the lady who organises the ads, so this idea is only in the earlier stages of germination. I just wanted to kick around some ideas, and see if any one had any thoughts or advice they could offer.

Oh... and if anyone in the region needs a cat, or can foster a cat, let me know. We have about 50 needing homes right now, and more to come. It is kitten season after all. :)

(cross posted on another forum)

The website idea is awesome! :)

I forget what country you're in, but if there's any general pet adoption website that covers your area it would be very helpful to pictures included on that site.

In the United States we have www.petfinder.com. Some of the local groups that don't have a website or even a shelter advertise their animals on that site and get many calls.

But yeah, a website is a great idea. Advertise the website address in the newspaper and that'll give people a chance to see the cats and read about them.

You're a saint for doing all that work.

I'm lucky in having an actual shelter to work from. And they pay for all my foster animals food and medical care.

A website is a GREAT idea, especially for a project of that size.

If you want ANY help with that website let me know. I mean it. I know a decent bit about web design, as it's been a hobby of mine for years and I was planning on going into a career in it. If you want any help creating the site or information about publishing it feel free to PM me or IM me and I'll help you out the best I can. I'd even be happy to design it for you if you'd like.

I'm an artist, and I've studied graphic design, so a good, clear layout is not beyond me. I live in an area that does not have total broadband coverage, and some poorer areas, so no dense, long loading slabs of giant hi-res pictures, no frames, keep it simple, all that. I know next to nothing of HTML, and am not even sure what programs would be best. I have a copy of Dreamweaver, but it is for Win2000 and I only have Win98. My choices right now are to use another program, or to use Dreamweaver and get my hands on a Win2000 or Win2000 upgrade disk. That's unlikely, so I'm open to any suggestions for what program to use to design this thing.

Kpickell, I live in Australia and we have our on version of petfinder (I forget what it is called, but it won't be hard to find), and I was going to look them up to. For sure, the next cat is going to have her photo on that, too. I'd like our own website simply because of the amount of cats in the district needing homes, and the amount of people living in the Illawarra (300,000 or so). There is also a trap, nueter, release program going on, and we always need more foster homes. I'm not a saint, I'd much rather be going to the shelter once a week and going home at the end of the day and forgettinga all about it.

Sokara, thank you for your offer of help, like I said, the idea is only in the earlier stages of germination at the moment, but if I need help at least I now know who to ask. :)

I'm big on coding things in notepad - WYSIWYG programs (like Dreamweaver, programs that create the code for you) aren't exactly my thing, so I'm not all knowing about them. Dreamweaver and Frontpage are the only ones I have experience with, but as far as I know they're the only ones anyone ever really uses anyway. Dreamweaver is by far superior to Frontpage. It has some CSS features that are really convenient, and I actually use it for that instead of writing all of it myself. I know Dreamweaver has a lot more spiffy stuff than Frontpage, but I can't get specific because I've almost only ever used the code view in Frontpage (and STILL had problems with it!). However, I've come across virtually no web designers who prefer Frontpage to Dreamweaver. So basically, I recommend that you use Dreamweaver, but if that's absolutely not an option than Frontpage won't kill you.

www.doteasy.com is the webhosting service that I use - their $0 hosting package is great for a small site!

Thank you Jes. I'll look into that. My ISP gives me a certain amount of megabytes of hosting free with my account, I have no idea if it is enough or not.