November 5, 2007, SAN MATEO, CA – Homeless Cat Network (HCN) today announced that a member of their board of directors, Cimeron Morrissey, was chosen as Animal Planet’s Cat Hero of the Year. The prestigious national award carries a $5,000 prize, which Morrissey is donating to HCN. HCN is a Peninsula-based non-profit, all-volunteer feline rescue organization working to humanely reduce the homeless cat population through Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), adoption, public education and responsible feral cat colony management.

Morrissey was chosen for the award due to her work to help create and run Project Bay Cat, a humane effort to manage feral cats along Foster City’s Bay Trail while also protecting local wildlife, and also for her work to educate and inspire people around the world to provide compassionate care to homeless and feral cats. In addition to her work on Project Bay Cat, Morrissey is an award-winning writer, an animal rescuer, a member of the Cat Writers’ Association, and has been a member of HCN’s board of directors for three years.

“I am truly honored by this award,” says Morrissey. “Project Bay Cat is a success because it’s a team effort, so I share this award with everyone who helps, including all the volunteers from the community and Homeless Cat Network, the City of Foster City, Sequoia Audubon Society, San Mateo Animal Hospital and Crystal Springs Pet Hospital – they are heroes for their compassion, their energy and their efforts.”

Morrissey’s efforts began four years ago when she identified an explosion of neglected homeless and feral cats living along the bay trail in Foster City and was inspired to take action. There were 174 cats living along the trail at the time. With the help of San Mateo Animal Hospital and Crystal Springs Pet Hospital, she began trapping the cats to have them spayed/neutered to stop the population’s growth, and rescue the kittens and friendly adult cats to find them homes. The City of Foster City had also noticed the cats, as had Sequoia Audubon Society who wanted to protect local birds. In 2004, a joint collaboration between the City of Foster City, Homeless Cat Network and Sequoia Audubon Society was formed to create Project Bay Cat, which was developed to curb the cat population’s growth through aggressive spay/neuter and adoption programs, as well as protect bird habitat and keep the path’s landscape debris-free. Thanks to these efforts, the colony has shrunken by 35% due to spay/neuter, vaccination and adoption efforts, 72 cats/kittens now have loving homes, 95% of the cats have been altered, the cats are healthy and cared for, and the local bird population is thriving.

“From the very beginning, Cimeron has been recruiting and empowering volunteers – including the amazing veterinary teams at San Mateo Animal Hospital and Crystal Springs Pet Hospital – to care for the cats and protect birds by establishing feeding stations away from bird nesting sites,” says HCN board member Jim Lynch, who built the feeding stations himself. “Plus the Tool Kit that she wrote is helping people around the world start their own humane feral and homeless cat management programs just like Project Bay Cat.” The Project Bay Cat Tool Kit is available for free online at www.cimeron.com (click on PBC Tool Kit).

“Five years ago, I didn’t know what a feral cat was, so this is kind of amazing for me,” admits Morrissey, whose name coincidentally means “feral” in Spanish (spelled Cimarron). “My husband and I kiteboard at a beach in Foster City, and I had always seen some cats there, but it never dawned on me that they weren’t owned by someone, that is, until there were kittens all over the place. My friend Dr. Rex Urich educated me about TNR as a viable way to humanely shrink the population and help the cats, and with the help of San Mateo Animal Hospital, Crystal Springs Pet Hospital, and volunteers, that’s exactly what we’ve done, and it’s working!  I love all animals, so it’s about helping both the cats and the birds. People are the cause of this problem since it started when people abandoned their cats along the trail yeas ago, so it’s our responsibility to solve the challenge humanely. Since my ‘day job’ is as a magazine writer, I write articles to open peoples’ eyes to feral and homeless cats, inspire them to help, and educate them about how to do so. I hope this award will inspire more people to spay/neuter their pets and any stray or feral cats they find so that future generations of homeless cats are not born.”

Homeless Cat Network is offering free Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) workshops to help the public humanely control feral, homeless and stray cats. The non-profit feline rescue organization advocates using TNR as a non-lethal method for controlling free-roaming cats. By having homeless cats spayed/neutered, it stops the cycle of breeding, eliminates the killing of healthy animals, and has been proven to humanely stabilize and reduce the number of feral cats on the streets. The free workshop offers training, free rental of trapping equipment, and access to free spay/neuter options. HCN’s TNR workshops are open to the public; please call their hotline or email the organization for more information: 650-286-9013, and press 3, or by emailing info@homelesscatnetwork.com.

Homeless Cat Network (HCN) is an all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, feline rescue organization working to humanely reduce the homeless cat population on the San Francisco Peninsula through spay/neuter, adoption, public education and responsible colony management. The organization provides advice, assistance and mentoring to individuals, public agencies and businesses.  HCN offers training in humane trapping, socialization, foster care, colony management and adoption procedures. HCN also offers a variety of rewarding volunteer opportunities for reliable, caring people, including supervised activities for high school students earning community service credit.

She is reached most easily via email at: cimeronm@yahoo.com

Cimeron is also reachable by phone in Mauritius at: 011-230-755-9773 or 011-230-451-5931

You may also try her on her husband’s cell phone: 415-505-7048

Jim Lynch, Treasurer

650-347-5540

Dr. Kim Haddad

650-345-1655

kkhaddad@aol.com

Dr. Lloyd Wilson

650-341-3438

docrex@earthlink.net

650-208-1751

Kristi Chapelle

kchappelle@fostercity.org

Robin Winslow Smith

650) 325-3306