Aloha & Welcome from Phyllis Tavares, Executive Director of 9th Life Hawaii
WHAT HAVE WE DONE IN THE PAST YEAR [2009] WITH YOUR HELP!
URGENT - Kitten season is here, please adopt a new best friend from us!!
Meet some of our ADORABLE ADOPTABLES
Aloha and welcome from the kitties at 9th Life Hawaii and their staff. As difficult as the recession has been for many of us, we are pleased to announce our accomplishments of the past 14 months. And we owe it to our supporters, our tremendous volunteers and a very dedicated Board of Directors. 9th Life Hawaii remains Maui's only non-profit, NO KILL Cat Rescue and Sanctuary. We are run 100% by volunteers. Because no one receives a salary, your entire donation or grant goes directly to benefit the cats.
9th Life Hawaii is the foremost leader on Maui of the NO KILL movement and we urge all of you who love animals to read "Redemption" by Nathan Winograd and also his latest book, "Irreconcilable Differences." Up to date information about the movement and its advocates can be found at www.nokilladvocacycenter.org or contact Nathan at www.nathanwinograd.com. The days of killing animals for population control are coming to an end.
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH "9th Life Donor challenges supporters to match her $55,000.00 donation."
We have a tremendous opportunity via a matching challenge! An anonymous donor will donate $55,000.00 to reduce the mortgage on the 9th Life property. She is challenging 9th Life supporters to match her donation. Reducing our mortgage will give us more resources to help more cats. Please respond as soon possible so we don’t lose this absolutely wonderful opportunity. We shelter 200+/- cats every day and have sterilized over 2,600 cats to date. You can help us help more cats. Please donate to this challenge grant as soon as possible. We don’t want to lose this opportunity and are counting on you to help us help the kitties.
Any amount you can donate will bring us that much closer to reaching our goal, this is a very generous offer so lets make it happen!! >^..^<
As we embark on a new year, we would like to thank everyone who has made it possible for us to hold our frequent spay/neuter clinics which have now resulted in more than 2,474 cats being sterilized. Sterilization on a mass scale is guaranteed to lower the cat population.
More good news: Dr. Tom Chlebecek, who used to fly over from Oahu to sterilize cats in our surgery room (but recently moved to the Czech Republic) is coming back to help Maui’s cats. He hopes to fly here several times a year and hold at least five to six clinic days over a two week period. Our first clinic with Dr. Tom will be mid-March, 2010. We need air mile donations to bring Dr. Tom and his vet tech to Maui on a regular basis. Please call us if you can donate the miles! 808-572-3499. Pictured is Dr. Jeff Young of Planned Pethood working at one of our clinics.
Recent clinic photos below
Our isolation building is now almost complete: New roof, new doors, new floors and fresh paint. We also have four stainless steel cages (vet quality) where new cats can be kept under observation and sick cats can be monitored. Clara is checking them out.
The isolation building still needs some exterior work including roofing shingles that we are using on the exterior sides of the building, but it finally can be used. Thanks again to Lori Ramona, who secured this building for us.
And for some really great community news, we are happy to announce a partnership with Maui Community College Construction Academy. This class teaches construction skills to our young people that will give them lifelong, marketable trade skills. They will be constructing at least five feeding stations/cat shelters roughly 4' x 6' during the Spring semester. Since most of our canvas-covered carports that had been used to provide shelter have literally "gone with the wind" these buildings could not come at a more opportune time. We look forward to a long relationship with the Maui Community College Construction Academy. If you can help 9th Life by donating construction material, the following is a partial list of what we can use. Exterior Latex Primer, roofing shingles, 2" x 4" x 8', cement blocks, 3/8" plywood siding.
There are many ways to help 9th Life Hawaii. Please vote daily at the Animal Rescue Site Shelter Challenge. Encourage your friends and family to do the same. It only takes a minute but it can mean as much as $4,000.00 a year to us. Below is a link to the Animal Rescue Site $100,000 Shelter Challenge. Please vote for 9th Life each day. Maui's kitties sure can use all the help we can give them. Maui Humane Society has inched ahead of us in this shelter challenge. Please help us regain the lead. Help us help more cats. Here are the links. One of them should work for you. www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/shelterchallenge or www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/shelterchallenge.faces
Help us raise money for 9th Life Spay/Neuter fund, click the Donate button on our widget to your left. Click the + and copy and paste the widget to your website to help us raise money!! Click the D to see the last 5 donors.
We are presently providing shelter for over 200 cats. These cats receive the best of care, special foods if needed, quality health care and because we are NO KILL, they will continue to receive five star care and medical care as needed. We only euthanize if an animal is suffering, the pain cannot be managed and/or there is absolutely no hope of recovery. EVERY treatable illness is treated. Your donations save lives every single day at 9th Life Hawaii.
Check out Sheba and Bear below.
We also encourage you to sign up for our newsletters which frequently mention our door prizes. One lucky gentleman was the winner of a week’s vacation at a luxurious Maui condo. We can also accept vehicles online through Donation Line, LLC and we always need gift certificates for our auctions. And of course, monetary donations always help.
Sheba stopped growing at about 2 months of age. She would eat, vomit, eat, vomit, eat and vomit. Two vets could find nothing wrong with her but her weight remained between 1 - 1.3 pounds for many months. She was put on special, high calorie food and fed six to ten times a day in small amounts.
Today, at 10 months of age, she weighs in at 2 lbs 10 ounces (normal weight for a 3 month old kitten). However, she no longer vomits her food and except for her tiny size, is an extremely loving, gentle soul. And yes, she is available for adoption now to someone accepting of her health issues. We doubt she will ever get much bigger. And while we are talking about adoptions, in the past year we have adopted out more than 100 cats.
Many of our adoptables are listed on Petfinder.com. No truer words were ever spoken: "By adopting a cat, you can’t change the world, but you will certainly change the world for that one cat."
Bear was one of our orphaned, bottle babies. He developed repeated life-threatening urinary blockages that necessitated two surgeries to remove the blockages before he was even three months old. After the third blockage, it was obvious that this would be an ongoing problem and so we opted for surgery that rerouted his urinary tract so that he essentially became a she. Needless to say, this was an expensive and involved surgery ably
handled by Dr. Roger Kehler at Kihei Veterinary Clinic. Here’s a photo of Bear wearing his hood so he would not lick his stitches after the surgery.
This IS what we do with your support and donations. We go about the business of saving lives. We are NO KILL. We give every cat a chance at life. If it's treatable, we treat it. It’s time to stop the killing for population control. It does NOT work. It’s time to stop killing because it is the easy way out. It’s time to stop the killing because this is how it has been done in the past. It’s time to do what is right. It’s time to do what we would want for ourselves. CHERISH LIFE. It’s time to put money and energy into what is guaranteed to compassionately reduce the cat population: mass sterilizations on a scale never before seen. Your support of 9th Life Hawaii is bringing this awareness mainstream. Never doubt for a moment ...................... together we are saving lives.
And while we are talking about saving lives we would like to mention Lucky and Malcolm and the plight of feral cats in general. We were called by Maui Humane Society (MHS). They labeled both of the cats below as feral. Lucky was the victim of terrible neglect and barely weighed five pounds. Both had bad eyes (likely the result of eye ulcerations from Upper Respiratory Infections). We know even less about Malcolm except that at one time someone cared enough about him to have him sterilized. Feral cats do not stand a chance at most municipal animal shelters including the Maui Humane Society. If they are not part of a recognized, established feral cat colony and have no tattoo or microchip, they are killed. 9th Life Hawaii took both these cats in. On the left is where Lucky was first found, emaciated and starving. Take a look at how feral they are. Obviously, they are NOT!
It is sad that cats can be labeled feral, because they are terrified and may lash out at strangers. Thousands of feral cats are killed every day all across this nation in municipal shelters. Sadder still, is that they may not even be feral, but someone’s frightened pet that did not want to be touched by a stranger. 9th Life Hawaii believes ferals have as much right to live as we do.
As we close this update, we want to thank our supporters, donors, volunteers and friends who have made a NO KILL Cat Sanctuary on Maui a reality.
happiness is being owned by cats ... 
Our isolation building is now almost complete: New roof, new doors, new floors and fresh paint. We also have four stainless steel cages (vet quality) where new cats can be kept under observation and sick cats can be monitored. Clara is checking them out.
And for some really great community news, we are happy to announce a partnership with Maui Community College Construction Academy. This class teaches construction skills to our young people that will give them lifelong, marketable trade skills. They will be constructing at least five feeding stations/cat shelters roughly 4' x 6' during the Spring semester. Since most of our canvas-covered carports that had been used to provide shelter have literally "gone with the wind" these buildings could not come at a more opportune time. We look forward to a long relationship with the Maui Community College Construction Academy. If you can help 9th Life by donating construction material, the following is a partial list of what we can use. Exterior Latex Primer, roofing shingles, 2" x 4" x 8', cement blocks, 3/8" plywood siding.
Sheba stopped growing at about 2 months of age. She would eat, vomit, eat, vomit, eat and vomit. Two vets could find nothing wrong with her but her weight remained between 1 - 1.3 pounds for many months. She was put on special, high calorie food and fed six to ten times a day in small amounts.
Bear was one of our orphaned, bottle babies. He developed repeated life-threatening urinary blockages that necessitated two surgeries to remove the blockages before he was even three months old. After the third blockage, it was obvious that this would be an ongoing problem and so we opted for surgery that rerouted his urinary tract so that he essentially became a she. Needless to say, this was an expensive and involved surgery ably
handled by Dr. Roger Kehler at Kihei Veterinary Clinic. Here’s a photo of Bear wearing his hood so he would not lick his stitches after the surgery.
