Volunteering for Cat Rescue
Want to help the stray cats of Christchurch, or do you just love cats? We are a volunteer-based organisation so rely on caring (or cat-loving!) people like yourself to carry out our work. Become a volunteer today!
Here are some of the activities you can help with:
Fostering rescue cats and kittens in your home to help with socialising them for re-homing. We provide everything you need including the support of Fosterer Managers who will help with all your needs when it comes to fostering. You can help by having one of our rescue kittens in the comfort and warmth of your very own home.
Intake Centre Volunteers – we have shifts available at the Intake Centre in Aranui, where our cats and kittens first come into our care. They stay at the cente until they can go to foster homes. The jobs include feeding, cleaning litter trays, helping to socialise kittens, cleaning crates, cleaning other equipment, and cleaning our housing facilities. There is a lot of cleaning, but the time spent with the kittens and cats is very rewarding. Shifts are approximately 2-3 hours long, between 8-11 am and 4-7pm but this depends on how many kittens or crates there are to clean.
Rescuing/trapping and transporting cats and kittens. You can join our rescue team and learn how to trap stray cats for desexing, and kittens for rescuing and re-homing. Help us win the battle of cat overpopulation by desexing one stray at a time! You will receive full training from one of our experienced rescue team members. We especially need volunteers with their own vehicles to help us with transport for trapping, and with transporting the trapped cats to and from the vet for desexing.
Promoting desexing – desexing companion and stray cats is so important. We promote the early-age desexing of kittens (kittens can be safely desexed from 800 grams in weight) and believe all cats and kittens should be desexed before adoption. You can help by spreading the desexing message to family, friends and the public. One easy way to do this is through social media – check out our Facebook page for pics you can share with friends. If you know someone with an undesexed cat, please read this article and talk to them about getting their cat fixed.
Fundraising – help us with our monthly supermarket collections by doing a two hour shift, place a donation box or cat food bin at your workplace or in a local shop, or sell Trade Aid chocolate bars to friends and workmates. You can also help with our fundraising stalls on the day or with organising.
Baking for stalls – we regularly hold fundraising stalls at events selling some of our yummy vegan baking. If you are able to help us out by doing some baking for us please sign up as a volunteer and you’ll be informed of our upcoming stalls. We have heaps of easy recipes available if you don’t know any.
Cat Taxi – help transport cats to and from the vet, and in other situations where transport is needed for our rescue cats.
Professional help – do you have a skill you’d like to offer to Cat Rescue, such as vet nursing, IT, editing, graphic design, photography, marketing, accounting, or another skill that might be useful to us? Please let us know by filling out our volunteer form.
To apply to be a volunteer, please complete our volunteer form.
Cat Rescue Monthly Meetings
Coming to our meetings is a great way to see what we do and how you can get involved. We hold our monthly volunteer meetings at Catnap Cafe, where we can catch up with some of our rescued kittens and have lots of cuddles and fun at the same time! You can also meet the team and share your ideas! If you are interested in coming along please contact us for more details. If you have completed the volunteer form you will receive our email updates about our meetings and other events. We hope to see you soon!