Sometimes (okay, not often), people ask me how they can get involved in cat rescue. That’s sort of like asking how you can swim in the ocean–you jump in!

Of course, not everyone wants to load up their home with cats, not everyone has a bucket of money on the back door, and not everyone has time to spend in volunteering for hours. But cat rescue–or let’s say pet rescue in general–has so many more aspects. You can dip a foot in the ocean at any point along the shore.

The first thing to consider is how much time, how much money, and how much energy you want to put in it. What part of the idea of rescue enticed you?

Here’s what rescue can be like:

• Sitting alone in your car for a few hours with binoculars or a baby monitor, watching and waiting for a feral (or stray) cat to enter a trap so it can be altered and vaccinated
• Fostering cats (or dogs) in your own home, treating them like your own, feeding, socializing–sometimes strays from the street may have lost some of their social skills
• Helping at a shelter or adoption agency–helping to clean cages, set up adoption cages, help with adoptions, walk dogs
• Help to socialize cats or dogs–pet, play, walk, cuddle
• Help to socialize kittens and puppies–kittens from feral moms can be socialized and tame and make fantastic pets, just as if they were born to your own kitty, but they need help from people
• Helping to pick up animals from foster care or a shelter and take them to adoption sites
• Bathing dogs, grooming cats
• Recovering cats in cages in your home–when feral cats are trapped and neutered, they, like any other cats, need to recover from the surgery and vaccinations before being returned to their homes
• Cleaning litter boxes, cages, and traps
• Feeding feral cat colonies
• Writing website “bios” for animals
• Taking photos of animals
• Marketing
• Writing brochures, flyers, or emails
• Distributing flyers
• Calling to do follow-ups on adopted animals
• Website design or maintenance
• Research
• Filing

One way to find volunteer work is to put an ad on www.petfinder.com, or just to go to the local PetsMart or Petco on both Saturday and Sunday (different groups come each day to each store) and talk to them, see if their values are the same as yours.

Dog, cat, horse, ferret, even turtles–there’s a rescue group for you. Some rescues focus on purebred animals, most take in any animal, some specialize in certain “looks” (Tuxedo Junction rescues from shelters, and specializes in black and white tuxedo cats), or kittens (Purrfect Pets specializes in kittens), and some take only owner-relinquished animals, others take only street strays, others only “pull” from shelters. So you can find your interest, your favorite animal, and your desired length of time to spend–from a few hours now and then to a regular volunteer committment on a weekly basis.