Pettales: Fr. Mike to bless animals Saturday

Happy Harvest Sonoma! Yes, the leaves are changing color, the vineyards are lit up at night for harvest and the Plaza was brimming with grape lovers all last weekend. The Vintage Festival is a wonderful celebration unique to our little burg. I hope we keep it going forever.

Pets Lifeline is happily celebrating Catoberfest starting Oct. 1 with all cats and kittens at $25 all month. Please come in and meet our fantastic feline friends big and small. The kitten season is hopefully trickling down and we have been seeing fewer smaller babies coming into the shelter. There are probably some still popping up so if you see any, please let us know.

The small kittens that find their way to us at this time of year are usually challenged health-wise, so we really hope to get them in here as soon as possible so we can take the best care of the little darlings.

And don’t forget the blessing of the animals on Saturday, Oct. 4, at 11 a.m. here at the shelter. Father Mike of St. Francis Solano will be here to bless all the shelter animals and all public animals that come to celebrate as well. Please have your animal either on a leash or safely in a crate.

We’ll have treats for pets and people, so please come celebrate this lovely tradition since the days of St. Francis of Assisi. A correction to my last article, there is NOT a service on Saturday at the church.

You can bring your animals to the St Francis Solano school on Friday at 12:15 p.m., but no service on Saturday. Sorry for the confusion.

Oct. 16 is National Feral Cat Day. Here are some helpful feral cat facts:

Feral cats have lived alongside humans for more than 10,000 years. They are the same species as pet cats. Feral cats, also called community or outdoor cats, live in groups called colonies and can thrive in every landscape. They are just as healthy as pet cats, but they are not socialized to humans and are therefore unadoptable.

Trap-Neuter-Return – a humane approach to managing and caring for feral cats – is the only effective method of stabilizing feral cat colonies. In the last decade, the number of local governments with official policies endorsing TNR for feral cats has increased tenfold, with hundreds of cities and towns successfully carrying out TNR.

However, in the majority of cities, feral cats are still caught and brought to animal pounds and shelters where they are killed. The shelter system is the number one cause of death for cats in the United States. About 70 percent of cats who enter shelters are killed there, including virtually 100 percent of feral cats. That’s why it’s so important for people like you to use National Feral Cat Day, and every day, to help build more compassionate communities for cats.

Their kittens can be adopted. Kittens can often be adopted into homes, but they must be socialized at an early age. There is a crucial window, and if they aren’t handled in time, they will remain feral.

So let’s be kind to all cats and contact us about our Trap Neuter Return program. Pets Lifeline has one of the most successful TNR programs in the county.

To segue over to dogs, we have a sweet arsenal of little dogs right now, one big lab/boxer mix, a medium size guy, Macho (who looks like a mini yellow lab) and a 10-month-old German shepherd mix with lots of energy.

Please visit us as we are open for your convenience Wednesday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

I look forward to seeing you soon. Until then ... peace, love and paws!

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