Wild Love, our Valentine’s Day Fundraiser, ends this month, but there is still time to participate. Donate $40 or more to Fabulous Felines by Friday, and you will automatically be entered in a drawing for our Wild Love Gift Package.
We want to thank those of you who have already participated; so far, this year’s Wild Love is one of our most successful. We will wait a few extra days for donations mailed on Friday to reach us, and will have our drawing at the end of the first week of March.
See the initial posting for a list of prizes and don’t forget to make your donation. You can visit our donations page or, if you prefer, mail a check to:
Fabulous Felines P. O. Box 14841 Albuquerque, NM 87191
Good luck with Wild Love, and best wishes for a wonderful spring.
Posted inFundraisers, Wild Love|Comments Off on There Is Still Time to Join Wild Love
Wild Love is our annual St.Valentine’s Day Fundraiser, and we are happy to say that Wild Love 2025 is set to go. As we began to organize the fundraiser, we were reminded that we had started Wild Love back in 2012, to celebrate the power of love to gentle even the most frightened, feral animal, and we have held it every year since. Our 2025 Wild Love Sweetheart is Mimosa (AKA Mimi). Mimi was less than a year old when one of our supporters found her, along with her two kittens, in a neighbor’s yard. We brought this trio to our Foster House where they have lived as a little family. Because of her special role in our work, we thought her a perfect candidate for Miss Wild Love!
As most of you probably know, the rules for Wild Love are simple. If you donate $40 or more between January 1 and February 28, 2025, you will automatically be entered in our drawing for a special Wild Love gift package containing well over $200 worth of exceptional gifts. This year’s package includes:
A gift card to Farina Alto Pizzeria and Wine Bar. Located on Montgomery just west of Juan Tabo, Farina Alto has been a long-time friend of Fabulous, and they are a real jewel in Albuquerque’s dining scene, combining the elegance of fine dining with the relaxed, welcoming atmosphere of a neighborhood restaurant. This year, they have been especially generous, giving us a $100 Gift Card.
After dinner at Farina, you can return home to finish your Valentine’s day celebration with a box of chocolates and a movie. The chocolates are part of the gift box, and the film is a favorite of ours, “The Cat Returns” in Blu-Ray. Both have been donated by Practical Tales Publishing. In this delightful fantasy, the well-intentioned Cat King transports a young girl against her will to the Kingdom of Cats. With the help of a mysterious feline adventurer known as “The Baron,” she must find a way to return to her world and family before she is transformed into a cat and stranded in the Kingdom of Cats forever.
In addition to this evening of food and entertainment, our 2025 package includes a unique shawl handknit by Jess, our volunteer. This was entered in the State Fair, and features four different knitting patterns. It was a “mystery knit along” project where Jess and other knitters received a clue each week starting with the type of yarn and where to begin. Each week a new clue arrived until the beautiful shawl was revealed.
This shawl is not the only handmade clothing item to grace our gift box. Sarah K., another talented volunteer, created and donated this warm and beautiful hand knit cowl. Just scrunch it around you neck to stay warm and stylish in cold weather without the hassle of a cumbersome scarf.
Rounding out our gift package is a Mary Kay Gift Box donated by Mary Kay representative Katrina Crandall, another long-time supporter. This gift features an assortment of personal care items including Hydrating Lotion, and Satin Hands Soap, Scrub, Cream, and Protecting Skin Softener, all presented in a lovely, cloth-covered box.
Finally, Practical Tales Publishing has donated a beautiful mug featuring a beckoning ginger cat framed in a wallpaper design adapted from the work of famous Victorian interior designer, William Morris. You can enjoy your favorite hot toddy while watching “The Cat Returns.”
Posted inWild Love|Comments Off on Wild Love 2025 is Set!!
We hope everyone had a healthy, safe, and Happy Holiday Season. For the most part, our celebrations found our volunteers and us staying close to home, caring for the cats in our foster house, and enjoying the pleasures of our homes and extended human and animal families.
In addition to maintaining the Foster House and its feline inhabitants, we continue our 20th year of supporting Project Apollo. It originated in our efforts to stabilize an unmanaged feral colony through TNR (Trap, Neuter, and Return). We are delighted that the population has remained stable and manageable. One of the neighbors has taken on the day-to-day activities of supporting the cats while we continue to provide food and veterinary care for the colony cats.
Still a Princess
Sadly, we lost two precious, older kitties in the Foster House. Little Thumbelina passed in early March. She was an active cat who enjoyed the affection of the volunteers and the company of other cats in the Foster House. One day, we noticed she was feeling unwell, and, after an extensive exam, the veterinarian determined that old age had overtaken her, and her body was shutting down. At 17, she had a full life with us.
Gigi
We also said goodbye to Gigi. Gigi was a glamour cat, a longhaired dilute tortie who was as mercurial as beautiful. Slow to be gentled, she eventually learned to trust and came to enjoy being petted, groomed, and loved by familiar volunteers—until she had had enough for the day and ended the interaction with a hiss. Sadly, neither her beauty nor her ferocity could stave off old age. At 16, she passed gently in the arms of people who loved her.
On a happier note, we started a new series of postings on our website, sharing the stories of literary and historical figures who loved cats. The first posting in the series shared the poem The Cat and the Moon, which William Butler Yeats wrote for his friend, Maude Gonne’s, cat. Other famous cat lovers we plan to cover include the 18th-century poet Samuel Johnson and his cat Hodge, and Juliette Greco, the French singer, actress, existentialist, companion of John-Paul Sartre, Simone de Bouvier, Miles Davis, and other noted intellectual figures—and enthusiastic cat lover. Stay tuned!
We also wanted to let you know that the food and supply donation basket we had at VCA Montgomery no longer has a place in their new location on Paseo del Norte. We are looking for a new place for food donations and will keep you posted.
2025
Mimosa, Our Wild Love Sweetheart
Our first order of business in 2025 is organizing Wild Love, our annual and widely anticipated (we hope 😺) St. Valentine’s Day fundraiser. Anyone who contributes $40 or more between January 1 and February 28 will be automatically entered in a drawing for a gift bag containing an assortment of goodies. We are starting to gather the prizes for the Gift Basket and have selected Mimosa, affectionately nicknamed “Bunny Butt” because she is part Manx and has a bobtail, to be our 2025 Wild Love Sweetheart. Look for more information on Wild Love in future postings and mailings.
Project Apollo is expanding to include several more blocks of the neighborhood. The kind woman who has taken on the day-to-day management of the colony has found additional neighbors to help. As a result of this expansion, the cost of food and veterinary care for the colony has increased significantly. We are working to increase our fundraising to cover these added expenses.
Finally, we always need volunteers to help at the Foster House. As always, the kitties pay volunteers with purrs and cuddles.
To all our supporters, we hope you will enjoy the blessings of a happy and prosperous New Year.
Happy Meows,
Merry and all the cats and people at Fabulous Felines
We are sorry to let you know that we have lost our beautiful Gigi. She passed on Friday, November 22, 2024, after the Veterinarian discovered a rapidly growing tumor in her throat. The tumor was untreatable, and the doctor told us that it would quickly grow to cut off her breathing. We agreed it was time to say goodbye, and we held her in our arms as she passed.
Gigi was one of the most beautiful cats we have ever known. She came to our foster house with her mother (Cheri) in 2008. Gigi was about six months old when she came to us, and her mother was not much older.
Gigi correcting an overly familiar contact.
We have always prided ourselves on using love and patience to gentle the frightened, often feral cats who have come to us, but Gigi took a more difficult path. She must have suffered some trauma before she came to us because she took a very long time to trust our volunteers and, even then, retained a deep thread of wildness throughout her life. She enjoyed being brushed by a trusted few and even came to them for affection or treats, but did not hesitate to announce when she wanted to be left alone.
The ever-mysterious Gigi hiding in her bed.
Along with her beauty, her independent nature was one of the reasons so many came to love her, and the beautiful, reclusive, mysterious, damaged Gigi was truly loved. We all will miss her.
For a celebration of this special cat, enjoy the galleries below, including a gallery sent by the volunteers who loved her.
And, a special gallery from the volunteers who loved and cared for her:
We just finished watching the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympics, and were so moved to see this beautiful city open its heart to athletes and spectators from all over the world that we wanted to do something to support the Olympic spirit. Then, we remembered a little fun video we did for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 and thought we’d share it again.
So please enjoy this video of Bushea winning the Turbo Toy competition, complete with tongue-in-cheek commentary!
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