The votes are in. After competing with 50,000 charities and over 2.5 million fans attempting to make their favorite charity number one, Kitten Rescue and its supporters are victorious! Receiving 3,464 votes in only four weeks, Kitten Rescue placed 23rd and will receive $20,000 to support their remarkable rescue work.

There is no doubt that utilizing social media for promotional purposes has become the standard in our culture, and Chase Bank found a way to use Facebook for an even grander idea: supporting and benefiting charities. Launched in January, Chase Community Giving “strived to be a catalyst for meaningful, positive, and sustainable change within high-need neighborhoods and communities across the globe.” Charities and their supporters worked to acquire the most votes in order to get their group to the cash prize. In the first round, Invisible Children won 1 million dollars after 122,742 votes propelled them into the lead. The success of the initial program resulted in Chase coming back for the summer, offering 5 million dollars to be shared among 200 charities.

In this summer round, Kitten Rescue became a contender and volunteers drummed up support via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and email to quickly advance the vote count over the month-long endeavor. Kitten Rescue adopter and donor Derek Christopher inspired many in the crusade by offering to make a $100 donation if 500 votes could be achieved in a 2-day period. When the votes reached 546 in only a day, not only did he make the promised donation, but Derek set a new bar by establishing a quota of 750 votes for an additional $100 donation. An hour before the deadline volunteers and supporters had rallied, and the 750 vote mark was hit! Derek generously made his second $100 donation. His response to all of the enthusiasm he drummed up? “I hope we’ll all continue to push and promote all of our friends to vote for Kitten Rescue in the Chase Community Giving challenge. Let’s see if we can get them to 1,000 by Tuesday!” Derek’s words remained an inspiration in the final weeks. Helping Kitten Rescue make it into the top 12% of participating charities with well over 3000 votes to win the $20,000, Derek and all of the Kitten Rescue volunteers, fans, and supporters certainly showed the animal love.

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If you’re one of the million people who “like” the Facebook fan page “I’m with Coco”, then you’ve certainly admired the artistic work of Mike Mitchell. This Los Angeles artist is the talent behind the striking image that is allowing fans of Conan O’Brien to proudly display their support of the popular and newsworthy comedian. Running the site with his wife Lauren and partner Jon Gibson, their work has been swiftly gaining recognition this year, including from Mr. O’Brien himself. Through the online shop you can buy t-shirts and prints with Mike’s artwork, as well as wrist bands displaying the catchy tagline. For the past few months, $1 of every item purchased was donated to the Haiti-based charity Planting Peace (www.plantingpeace.org). Mike posted last week: “To this date, we have raised $20,736.00, which is roughly 1.25 million de-worming treatments (yes, that is how bad the situation is in Haiti). Pretty awesome, right? Since we were able to raise so much money for Planting Peace, I thought it would be nice to spread the love a little by switching to a new charity. We will now be donating a portion of all sales to Kitten Rescue.”

Last year Mike and Lauren adopted their blind, one-eyed cat Peeka from Kitten Rescue. Bringing this lovable feline into their home endeared them to KR and the important work the organization does. If you don’t have your t-shirt yet, it’s time to buy and show the love for Conan and Kitten Rescue! By going NOW to http://imwithcoco.myshopify.com/collections/all you can ensure part of your purchase dollars are being donated to continued efforts in saving homeless and abandoned cats and dogs.

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I have done a few adoption days at Pasadena but mostly I am a regular volunteer at the Sanctuary. I first noticed Milton the Wednesday after he came to the Sanctuary from the BFAS fall adoption event. I immediately fell in love with his adorable little face. I had three cats, wasn’t really looking to add to my family, and figured there would be no problem finding him a furever home. Six month later, that furever home was mine.

Milton has fit right in since the instant he joined the family. I have three very mellow cats – well two I would describe as mellow and the third is hyperactive but loves other cats. I didn’t expect to have any problem with Milton integrating into the family, and I was right. All three cats were sitting there waiting to see who was in the box (since it wasn’t any of them). When I opened the carrier Milton popped out with his typical curious look on his face, but no fear. Jack and Sasha sniffed him once or twice and walked away. Pandora got right in his face and seeming to feel somebody needed to say SOMETHING briefly hissed – no response from Milton. So she hissed again, still no response. So she hissed a third time, walked away and laid down and stared at him. With the introductions out of the way, Milton began his exploration of the house, and he’s been exploring ever since.

Milton`s personality goes beyond curious to fascinated. Everything fascinates him. He’s not much of a talker, but he has almost a bark when he gets excited. The first big attraction was the mirrors in my house – seeing another cat he hadn’t heard (or smelled) coming would at first startle him, then he would start to walk up to the cat and when, god forbid, the other cat didn’t retreat but, instead walked towards him, he would do the little side walk with an arched back thing and bark once. When nothing happened he would walk away and lose interest – until the next time. While he seems to have gotten a bit more used to the mirrors every so often that doppelganger cat will sneak up on him again.

The second big fascination that developed was water – he’s right up there with Poseidon in his love of water. The second week he began sleeping in the sink and even tried to turn it on a time or two after sitting on the counter watching me. He drives my housekeeper crazy because he sits on the counter while she tries to clean the kitchen and chases her hand as she washes dishes or wipes down the counter. He’s gotten in to the sink and grabbed the dish sponge and carried it away into the bathroom (it now is stashed under the sink again). The most recent favorite is the bath/shower. Actually all of my cats like my tub for some reason, but none to the extent Milton does. As I take a shower he chases the drops running down the shower door. As soon as I finish he jumps into to shower and bats at all the water drops left. He’s even jumped in after I’ve taken a bath and before all the water drained and didn’t freak-he started chasing the water down the drain instead.

Everything Milton does is done with gusto – from eating (all his then trying to crowd out the other cats and eat their food too) to playing with his tail (he chases his own tail) to chasing Pandora and being chased in return, to seeing a bird through the sliding glass door and running full blast across the living room, stopping just in time when he realizes the door or the screen is closed.

He is an adorable, funny, loving little boy and even the other cats would agree a great addition to our family.

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On Sunday May 2nd Hamburger Mary’s hosted their Legendary Bingo Event with all proceeds benefiting Kitten Rescue. A $20 donation from participants gave them 10 bingo cards and access to all the drinking, eating, and fun of the evening. The balls started rolling at 7pm and winners of each round received fabulous prizes that were supplied by Kitten Rescue supporters.

Included in the winner’s gift baskets were tickets for the Alex Theater,
books, and t-shirts created by the LA Derby Dolls. Some items were
auctioned off, including a Christian Dior wallet , a poster signed by the
entire cast of the Family Guy, and a coffee table book from the television series 24, signed by a member of the cast. To complete the evening, a performance of Hamburger Mary’s fantastically outrageous drag and burlesque show Follies Burgére entertained the room.

The event raised over $1,600 for our beloved felines, helping us continue to rescue cats across LA and place them in loving homes. Even if you missed this fundraising event, you can make a donation to support Kitten Rescue’s mission at any time by clicking here.

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Last month Kitten Rescue held it’s “St. Catrick’s Day Sanctuary Open House,” an event packed with cat lovers from across Los Angeles. The afternoon affair was set in the sanctuary, right among the guests of honor — 150 fantastic felines. Complete with a Saint Patrick’s Day theme, volunteers, supporters, and donors enjoyed green beer and barbeque, while connecting with old friends and making new ones (including the furry kind!)

Newcomers to Kitten Rescue were able to tour the facilities, getting acquainted with the resident kitties and observing the day-to-day operations of the organization. Seeing some of the participants from the sponsorship program meet their sponsored cars provided some of the more touching moments of the day. (Touching moments not pictured).

The successful event generated new kitty sponsorships and financial contributions, as well as donations of food, litter, treats, bedding, scratchers, and toys. It’s still not too late to make a donation or sponsor one of the amazing animals at the sanctuary. Check out the website where you can make a secure online donation and help touch the lives of these amazing cats.

See more pictures from the event on the Kitten Rescue Flickr Account.

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Who could forget the little toy poodle with a very long list of medical problems?

Getting his hair cut was easy, even teaching the visually impaired puppy with an under functioning brain to use a pee-pad wasn’t too bad, but to deal with any of his series issues was going to take a lot of money.

Last Saturday was Kitten Rescue’s 2nd Annual Fur Ball at the Skirball. Among other amazing acts of generosity performed by our volunteers and supporters, attendees opened their hearts and their wallets for this little sad story and pledged almost $4,000.00 for his care!

Things are definitely looking up for Bobbles (while he looks down and left and shakes all at the same time) and he has an MRI scheduled for Tuesday. If he ends up needing a shunt to release fluid from his head he will stay overnight and get the surgery in the morning.

Expect more Bobbles updates in the near future! Thank you to everyone who has asked about him and to all those who donated for his surgery.

Technorati 95R8WPR4NSP5

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The auction may be over but keyboard cat is still taking up a considerable amount of Kitten Rescue volunteer time. We admit that we are not experienced eBay sellers but we never expected to encounter as many problems as we have with what we thought would be a simple fundraising event.

Not only did we grossly underestimate the time and money involved in shipping 17 pieces of artwork all across the country, we just found out that 3 of those pieces were stranded at the U.S. Post Office. We thought everything had shipped a while ago until we got a message from one our buyers that they never received their artwork…and then we got another…and then we started to worry.

But wait, we have tracking numbers for everything we shipped! — or so we thought. When we looked we were three tracking numbers short (remember we mentioned that we’re new to this). In all the excitement of shipping we seem to have forgotten to match the number of tracking receipts with the number of items shipped. The result of an almost two hour “discussion” with the local Post Office is that a few pieces in our shipping order must have been pushed aside, put on the floor, picked up by someone else, or otherwise removed from the group that was actually paid for. A notice was allegedly sent to our address notifying us that TWO packages were waiting to be picked up at the office, which, never having been paid for, were marked as undeliverable. Even though we never got that notice those pieces were easy to find and claim. The third piece took a little more time and effort to locate as we tried to convince everyone that we weren’t as crazy as we sounded and that somewhere on the premises was an undocumented package full of keyboard cat art.

Just before we started the process of requesting a review of the security tapes to prove we had brought in 1 more package than could be accounted for, the final packaged showed up! Truly it was a keyboard cat miracle!

And now, extremely late, these three pieces are finally on their way to their new homes. Thanks again to all the buyers for their patience and understanding.

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DOB: 5/18/07

Starbuck is the proverbial curious cat. The world is his playground, and everything is a toy. That includes other cats’ tails, much to their consternation

Although Starbuck is a very active cat, he is also gentle and loving. If you sit down to watch TV, you’d better make sure the remote is at hand, because you’ll soon have a cat glued to your lap.

Starbuck gets along well with other cats. In fact, he’d love a feline companion for endless games of pounce, chase and wrestle.

If you are interested in learning more about Starbuck or in adopting him, please click here to email his foster parent.

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Then things got even worse. I got a wound on top of my head (I haven’t told the humans how that happened) which got infected and turned into a huge abscess, almost the size of a small grapefruit (look at the first picture below - that’s my BEFORE photo). It looked like I was wearing a kitty-sized football helmet! I started feeling really sick because of the untreated infection, and was actually pretty close to saying goodbye to this world, and hello to kitty heaven!

Then, these crazy cat people came along, and found me sleeping under a car. They decided they had to rescue me and take me to the vet. I gave them a hard time, because I didn’t know if I could trust them. I tricked them so they would think I was a feral cat. The vet they took me to performed surgery on my head (that’s why I now have a scar running down the middle) and drained the abscess. I opened the stitches after surgery, since my head was feeling itchy. So they took me in for surgery again. And I got itchy again…

So after three surgeries at the vet and a month of TLC at this rescuer’s house, I healed up (look at how handsome I look now!), put on weight, and even showed them that I was a sweet, tame cat - and not the wild street cat I’d led them to believe I was. I showed them that I actually really love humans - I love sitting near you, rubbing against you, and being pet. I love giving you love bites (and have learned to make those softer!). I love purring and I love playing. I may act like a big tough alpha male cat sometimes, but I am very sweet and a softie inside. And I really love playing dad to kittens. I love to groom them and take care of them. So please can I have a home with a kitten or two? I don’t get along with all adult cats though - only some. And I definitely don’t think much of dogs, so no dogs, please! My foster mom is nice and all, but I can’t wait to find my own permanent humans. Do you think it might be you?

If you’re interested in adopting, please e-mail to set up a meeting.

Oh, and I’m neutered, microchipped, vaccinated, dewormed, de-flead, and FeLV/FIV tested! All I need now is my own home! — and maybe a portion of your bed.

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