By Janet Vormittag
WKTV Contributor
One of the goals of the Community Cat Crew is to stop spring from being known as kitten season.
Five women founded the cat rescue and advocacy group in January 2022. The director is Kendi Helmus of Hudsonville, but she doesn’t want to take credit for starting the group.
“I told her if she tackled it I’d be her right-hand woman,” said J.J. LaBelle who lives in Eastown. “We wouldn’t have done it without her. She had the passion and we supported her.”
Other founders include Trish Keyzer and her daughter Syd Keyzer of Grandville and Erin O’Keefe of Jenison.
“We share the workload,” Helmus said. Each woman works with a network of foster homes in her area and works to find homes for the cats and kittens in their care.
“We have kittens in homes from Sparta to Zeeland,” LaBelle said. The group has close to 25 foster homes. The group became a 501(c)3 in April 2023.
Two meanings
Helmus explained that the group’s name has two meanings. First, they’re dealing with community cats — outside cats who have no owners, the community is their home. Second, they want to educate people in the community about the importance of getting the cats spayed/neutered to stop the birth of unwanted litters of kittens.
“Eighty percent of kittens in shelters come from community cats,” Helmus said.
Spring is kitten season
Anyone involved in cat rescue soon learns that spring is when rescues and shelters are overwhelmed with kittens.
“It took years to educate people to fix their personal cats. Our mission is to educate people to fix community cats,” LaBelle said.
Before starting Community Cat Crew, the women volunteered for local rescue groups.
Their focus is TNVR, trap-neuter-vaccine-return. They live-trap outside cats and have them spayed/neutered and vaccinated before returning them to where they were caught. If the cats are friendly they place them in foster homes and find them new homes. If they come across kittens, they’re also placed in foster homes where they can be socialized before being put up for adoption.
Helmus’ passion is trapping cats. She got her start in rescue when as a teenager she found a litter of kittens and snuck them into her bedroom closet. When she showed one to her mother, she learned the kitten had fleas. Her parents soon discovered she had a closet full of flea infested kittens. She was allowed to keep one kitten who she named Gus.
“He was my first rescue kitty,” she said.
With a husband and three children, Helmus’ time is precious. Part of what she does for the group is record keeping.
“I’m a spreadsheet queen,” she said with a laugh.
LaBelle loves to care for bottle babies — newborns who don’t have a mother. “They’re my passion,” she said. She falls in love with each one of them, but knows they’re only with her temporarily. “I’m a huge believer that goodbye is the goal,” she said, but she admits saying goodbye to kittens she raised is bittersweet. “They go and it makes room for new residents.”
LaBelle grew up on a farm and taming feral barn kittens was an ongoing passion. When she was older she spent two years transporting close to 100 cats and kittens from her mother’s farm in the Upper Peninsula to Grand Rapids to get them spayed/neutered and rehomed.
She usually has 12 to 18 fosters plus a dozen or more bottle babies.
“For six months I don’t sleep,” she said.
She works at Schmidt”s Animal Hospital in Walker and can bring the babies to work to care for them.
Funded through adoption fees and fundraising
The group is funded through adoption fees and fundraising. “TNVR is expensive and you’re not getting a return, but it has to be done,” Helmus said.
Members of the group attend various events including farmer’s markets to educate people about the importance of spaying and neutering community cats and to sell craft items to raise funds. This year they’ve partnered with GR8 Food Trucks to staff their beer tent at Riverside Park in Grand Rapids.
One of their needs is volunteers to staff events and to make items they can sell. They also would appreciate monthly donors.
“A small commitment on a monthly basis — something we can count on — makes the work a little easier,” LaBelle said. They also have an Amazon Wish List.
Last year, which is the year the group started, the women TNR’d 93 cats and had 140 adoptions. Their goal was to double those number in 2023. At the end of July they had trapped 93 cats and had close to 180 adoptions.
“We’re moving in the right direction, but we have a long way to go before spring isn’t considered kitten season,” LaBelle said.
For more information or to contact the Community Cat Crew: admin@communitycatcrew.org, www.communitycatcrew.org. You can also follow them on Facebook.
