Small Biz Spotlight: Street Cats Club keeps Emporia’s furry friends out of harm’s way

By Amanda Davis amanda@emporia.com

Editor’s Note: Small Biz Shoutout is a monthly series where The Gazette highlights a local small business, and talks with them about their story, their triumphs, and more. Have a small business that you would like featured? Please email amanda@emporia.com.

Six years ago, Victoria Partridge began to notice that Emporia is home to quite a few stray cats. So, she began to look around for solutions.

“I started looking at existing rescues and resources and what was already being done and started looking at the gaps to see what still needed to be done,” Partridge said. “I noticed that there was no large-scale TNR [trap, neuter, release] being done and that is the most effective and main way to help reduce the continued growth of a stray cat population.”

Partridge founded her own TNR program, which shaped into the Street Cats Club. Residents can fill out requests on the club’s website, and once a space opens up, club volunteers humanely capture the cats. Partridge partners with K-State Shelter Medicine Program students to spay and neuter, and the cats are returned to their colonies afterwards. Colony caretakers monitor local cat colonies, making sure the cats are healthy and cared for.

“We receive requests from community members constantly,” Partridge said. “Our list has over 1,500 cats on it, just waiting to be spayed or neutered from over 200 community members and we get new requests every single day. It is such an incredibly needed program, which I didn't realize when I started this.”

The TNR process typically takes three days. The cat is returned with vaccinations and an ear chip, and caretakers check up on the cat to make sure there are no complications.

Each year, 300 to 500 cats go through the TNR program. Over 1,500 cats have been sterilized in the past four years. The Street Cats Club also operates the Lola Love Fund, which provides neuter and spay services to financially struggling cat owners.

Partridge is aiming to increase the TNR program.

“We estimate that there's about 7,500 stray cats here in Emporia, and the longer we take to fix the majority of them, the more cats there will be,” Partridge said. “We would like to do 1,000 or 2,000 every single year.”

The Street Cat Club has also been able to settle hundreds of stray cats into a forever home with its foster program. Cats who are sick, injured, or orphaned are placed with residents to recover before they are eventually adopted. Around 150 cats are brought into the foster program every year, and nearly a dozen homes take care of the at-risk animals.

Partridge works with volunteers to match the cat with the perfect family.

“There should be no dollars out of their pockets, and we also provide a lot of emotional support ,” Partridge said. “If anybody's going on vacation, we work to get their cats covered. We support them if they're having any concerns with their foster cats or they're needing to take a break from fostering.”

Many of the cats that are in the TNR and foster programs have experienced traumatic events - they’ve been kicked, thrown out of a vehicle, and severely injured. The Street Cat Club works with local veterinarians to keep the cats healthy, and foster parents provide emotional support. According to Partridge, it makes for some incredible stories.

“We work closely with our local vets to help these cats get back on their feet when they've been dealt the most horrible outcomes,” Partridge said.

The Street Cats Club is entirely volunteer-based, and no one working receives a check. Looking to the future, Partridge wants to continue serving the stray cats of Emporia and wants to begin doing more.

“Our plans are always just to not do less,” Partridge said. “We keep doing what we're doing while searching for ways to do more. We're always in communication with different opportunities and ways that we can hit some of those goals that would lead us towards being able to have a greater impact in this community.”

The Street Cats Club hosts multiple events throughout the year to fundraise for operations. Lollapalooza, a street party and carnival, will be set up in the 900 Block of downtown Emporia on July 12.

To learn more about volunteering and ways to get involved, please visit https://www.streetcatsclub.org/.