Cat’s Cradle of the Shenandoah Valley provides financial assistance for spay/neuter of owned and feral cats and Trap-Neuter-Return services for feral colonies; rescues/fosters/adopts out homeless cats from area shelters; and provides pet retention/rehoming programs. Our mission is to reduce the number of cats and kittens taken into area shelters and work toward eliminating needless euthanasia of healthy adoptable cats in our community.  Our service area includes the three rural counties of Augusta, Page, and Rockingham and the encompassed independent cities.

We are proud that we spend the vast majority of our annual expenses on our lifesaving program services – since 2015, between 87-91% of donations and program income each year are spent on program services, with only minor percentages of expenses for fundraising and non-program administrative costs.  We field over 10,000 assistance request calls each year and that number continues to grow.  Our constituency is broad-based, with primarily low to middle-income families using our spay/neuter and pet retention programs, but all demographics benefiting from our adoption and rehoming programs. 

Cat’s Cradle was founded in 1998 by Pat Rossi, a woman determined to provide no-kill alternatives for stray cats. Her idea was simple, but powerful. She worked with a few generous local veterinarians to provide sterilization and vaccines at a reduced price to anyone who had found a stray cat and was willing to keep it.

It wasn’t long before the organization found itself fostering some cats and kittens and finding homes for them.  Despite Cat’s Cradle’s considerable contribution in foster and adoption, just as many cats that could not find homes quickly were being put down in local shelters. Furthermore, colonies of free-roaming cats, most of which were unadoptable, were being put down en masse when merchants or citizens called Animal Control with complaints. Intake at our local shelters was increasing each year. In 2001, Cat’s Cradle board members devoted two days to defining a vision for the Shenandoah Valley. They realized we needed to focus on spay/neuter and Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) efforts. It was the most effective way to address overpopulation, and no one else in the community was doing this. Since the founding of the area’s first low/cost spay/neuter clinic in 2005, Cat’s Cradle has concentrated on aggressive, geographically targeted spay/neuter and TNR, to more effectively and quickly bring down animal intake at local shelters.   Pro-active spay/neuter facilitation and TNR are still our primary program as we celebrate our 25^th anniversary in 2023 - - we know that unless we get and keep the cat population numbers down, we will never adopt our way out of shelter intake and euthanasia!

Cat’s Cradle has grown considerably since 1998, becoming incorporated and gaining tax-exempt status in 2005. In 2023, our dedicated volunteers, including our board of directors, are assisted by a small staff of eight (five part-time and three full-time.)  Thanks to a restricted endowment gift in 2021, we were finally able to establish a full-time Executive Director position in 2022! Our network of foster homes achieves between 500-600 local adoptions per year, partnering with PetSmart stores and PetSmart Charities on adoption events.  We also partner with no-kill organizations outside Virginia to transport many more cats and kittens to shelters in need of adoptable animals each year. Through our spay/neuter and TNR programs we assist the public with over 3,000 sterilizations per year, partnering with regional low-cost, high-volume clinics as well as for profit veterinarians offering rescue discounts to support our mission. Our pet retention program provides behavioral counseling, short-term pet food assistance, and financial assistance with veterinary fees to approximately 200 families each year to help prevent owner surrender of pets to area shelters. And our pet rehoming program offers assistance to cat owners or finders who cannot keep their pet or a found cat despite all efforts, so that we can help to rehome cats without having them surrendered to area shelters.