Lolapalooza Benefit for the Lola Love Fund

By Chris Adams The Emporia Gazette

The Street Cats Club is hosting its Lolapalooza Street Party & Carnival July 12 to benefit its Lola Love Fund for spay-neuter services.

The annual event will feature food trucks, music bounce houses, games, face painting, raffle vendors and prizes.

Admission is free, however, tickets will be required for most activities and are available for purchase at the gate. The event runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will be held at the 900 block of downtown Emporia.

“We're going to have a couple of inflatables, games, prizes…a lot of activities for families,” said Street Cats Club executive director Victoria Partridge. “There will be some family-friendly vendors there and then some raffle prizes, which is new this year, too. Some different family-friendly activities that families can take advantage of during the summertime.”

The Lola Love Fund is a grant opportunity for low-income cat owners to get their cats spayed or neutered for free. The fund’s goal is to fill a void in local resources for cat owners who cannot afford low-cost options, thereby preventing their cats from being spayed or neutered and potentially increasing the community's stray cat population.

The fund is named after Lola Walker, who reportedly saved the lives of hundreds of cats throughout the city.

“She is the founder of Purralot Kitty Rescue. She just retired last year and saved the lives of over more than 800 cats here in the Emporia community…she's incredible,” Partridge said. “We named the grant after her and throw a street party every year around her birthday just for fun and to raise the money for the grant so we can continue to provide free spay and neuter for low-income cat owners.”

The impetus of the grant fund was the result of a local hoarding case from 2022 that involved 86 cats. But it actually began with five.

“We helped with a hoarding case here in town that involved about 86 cats…this person did not want to have 86 cats, she just could not afford to get her five cats fixed. And so then those five cats just kept making more cats,” Partridge said. “When we were talking to that homeowner about how her situation evolved into what it became, we realized that it was necessary to get the program up and going.”

This undertaking necessitated creating a fundraiser to underwrite the grant initiative. Street Cats Club had funding for trap-neuter-return program and community outreach programs but nothing specific for free spay-neuter services.

“We wanted to create a fundraiser that would keep it supported and bring in the funding that we would need to put it back out into the community,” Partridge shared. “We were kicking around some different ideas and wanted to do something that the community would benefit from, the activity itself. We wanted it to be something that was very family friendly.”

The Lolapalooza has been successful in fulfilling its mission, expanding the fund each year.

“Every year, we've been able to raise more and more money, which means being able to spay and neuter more and more cats. We’re on track to raise more money than we did last year. So every year it's a couple thousand more than we raised the year before.”

For more information about the 2025 Lolapalooza Street Party & Carnival, please visit www.streetcatsclub.org or their Facebook page, Street Cats Club.