The Straygency

10/15/2026

📣The call for donations was heard! We are honored to be recipients of the items offered to support SNIP Iowa.

🐾 The SNIP Iowa Rummage Sale will be 🗓 Thurday, October 22nd from 8:00am to 5:00pm
🗓 Friday, October 23rd from 8:00am to 5:00pm
🗓 Saturday, October 24th 8:00am to Noon

👍All proceeds will go toward opening the SNIP Iowa low-cost spay/neuter clinic in Cedar Rapids, Ia. Proceeds will be used to purchase medical equipment and supplies needed to perform life changing procedures.

❓️Do you have gently used items to donate? We’d love your help turning your unwanted treasures into a whole lot of good for our community cats!

📦 Last Call Donation drop-off:
Friday, October 16th from 10 AM–3 PM
and Saturday, Oct 17th from 9 AM to Noon.
📍 1850 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids
(next to Blairs Ferry Animal Hospital)

NOTE: the address is in NE Cedar Rapids!

⭐️If you need to drop off alternative hours, please send a message and we will accommodate ⭐️

Please share!

10/13/2026

🐾 SNIP Iowa is teaming up with Thrift For Good! 🐾

Thrift For Good has graciously offered us their space ahead of their opening to host a fundraising garage sale! All proceeds will go toward getting SNIP Iowa’s low-cost spay/neuter clinic up and running.

Have gently used items to donate? We’d love your help turning your unwanted treasures into a whole lot of good for our community cats!

📦 Donation drop-off:
📅 Tuesday 10/13 –Friday 10/16
⏰ 10 AM–3 PM
📍 1850 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids
(next to Blairs Ferry Animal Hospital)

NOTE: the address is in Cedar Rapids!

🏷️ Sale will be Oct 22 - Oct 24

Every donation brings us one step closer to opening our doors! Please share and help spread the word!

10/03/2026

‼️Community Cats‼️ The Hard Truth‼️ Please Read‼️

*Critter Crusaders of Cedar Rapids is receiving no less than 10 requests each day for assistance with what we call community cats. These kitties reside in every town and city throughout Iowa and the entire country. The term reflects both feral cats and kittens along with “domestic strays”. These are the animals who have lived life with people at some point, then discarded or lost, forcing them to live a cruel life outside. The majority are unaltered and go on to propagate the crisis.

*Every animal rescue that accepts cats, is under seige from this heartbreaking epidemic of homelessness and neglect. Many of these animals are tossed outdoors when owners move or are no longer wanted. Many are sick and injured. This crisis is also a disease of inhumanity.

*Critter Crusaders does our best to respond to the unending calls for help. But we just cannot assist them all. We are not a rescue. Before we take any medical case, we need a rescue or shelter on board to handle adoptions when pet patients are healthy and released from care.

*We have no foster homes. That is the function of rescues and shelters.

*We have limited funds due to very expensive veterinary care. With so many dogs and cats already in our medical system, funds need to be reserved for those pets undergoing lengthy medical care, surgeries and recoveries. Because we take the worst cases, the specter of complications is built into our estimated costs for every pet patient under our medical care.

‼️ When you call or message for help, we need you to understand the overwhelming crisis that all of our animal welfare organizations are experiencing. We are not kidding about this.

‼️YOU NEED TO BE PREPARED TO DO YOUR PART. This includes keeping kitties in a secure, safe location until resources open up to assist.

‼️ If the cat needs immediate veterinary care, consider developing a call list of family, friend and coworkers who can donate to make that happen. This is not optional. If you call with the expectation of immediate help, you will be disappointed, though absolutely no fault of our organizations. This crisis includes ALL OF US WORKING TOGETHER.

‼️We ENCOURAGE local veterinary clinics to greatly reduce their spay/neuter costs for community cats that are coming through legitimate organizations and will be re-released outdoors. These would include The Straygency, S.A.I.N.T. Rescue (Saving Animals in Need Today), Paws of Hope Animal Rescue, Funky Paws Animal Rescue of Buchanan County,Cedar County League for Animal Welfare, Last Hope Animal Rescue, A Purposeful Life Animal Rescue & Sanctuary, Hero's Haven Animal Rescue, Better Together Animal Rescue, Inc. and so many more. These clinics could donate their time and resources to do the right thing in overwhelmed communities, to assist the cat overpopulation. Iowa Humane Alliance is an amazing organization but they cannot handle it all. Members of the Eastern Iowa Veterinary Association should add this to their meeting agenda and develop a plan of action for participating. Imagine the effect that one Saturday a month spay/neuters at a variety of clinics (after business hours), could have on trimming the cat overpopulation in the Cedar Rapids area.

❤️ It is imperative that you know how much we care. This heartbreaking situation takes a toll on all of us in animal welfare as well as you, the public. If we could wave a magic wand to alleviate the disease of homelessness and suffering for community cats, we could all sleep better at night. With the upcoming advent of a TNR program in Cedar Rapids, hope of a better, more humane future for these animals is on the way, though it will take significant time. No organization can adopt their way out of this. The numbers of homeless cats is too great.

❤️ If you care about this crisis, please share this and many other posts from multiple organizations on how you can assist. Saving our community cats is a responsibility shared by all. Please help us by becoming part of the solution.

❤️🐱 We Thank You. ❤️🐱

09/27/2026

💔 A week of loss.

This week, we received three devastating calls.

Simba was one of them.

When we received the call about Simba, Critter Crusaders graciously stepped in to support his emergency veterinary care at North Star. Once he was there, we learned just how extensive his suffering had become.

There was no happy ending for Simba. But there was something else we could give him—love, compassion, and dignity in his final moments. He didn’t have to face them alone. And given his diagnosis, that is all we could have hoped for.

Then came two more heartbreaking calls.

Two community cats we had provided TNR for this summer had been hit by cars.

It’s one of the heartbreaking realities of life for outdoor cats. We hate getting these calls. We wish we could protect every cat from every danger, but we know we can’t.

What we can do is make sure they are known.

We are incredibly grateful for our partnership with Fi Microchips, which allows us to microchip all of the community cats we TNR. Because these cats may not have a house. They may not have a person they belong to. They may not have a family waiting for them at the end of the day.

But we know them.
We know where they live.
We know their stories.
We care when something happens to them.

And because they are microchipped, they have a permanent record saying, “Someone knew me. Someone cared about me.”

Community cats are not invisible.

Rest peacefully, Simba, Benedict and Lewis. We are so sorry we couldn’t change the outcome.

Bless his precious soul.💔

Critter Crusaders received a photo and a call for help from a wonderful person on the west side of Cedar Rapids. This sweet kitty showed up in absolutely horrible condition when the homeowners called for help. Dayna from The Straygency picked this boy up and took him to North Star Veterinary Clinic in Hiawatha with CC heading up his emergency care. He was named Simba. The news was not good.

Dr. Loni Ellsworth sedated him to get a better look and the tissue damage was dramatic. She suspected cancer and placed some cells on a slide. Under the microscope she was able to verify that this most likely was squamous cell carcinoma with a large tumor and a few smaller ones in his mouth and throat. The external tissue was sadly damaged over time by this aggressive process.

Critter Crusaders routinely treats cancer in pets, but sadly for Simba, his disease was far too advanced to even attempt. We chose to humanely euthanize, giving him the peace and comfort he deserved.

Simba had been someone’s cat. He was friendly and interactive, but like so many cats in the Cedar Rapids and surrounding areas, he was forced to live a tough life outdoors and on his own. Human failure once again. This boy is a perfect illustration of how these community cats suffer and what will be a positive impact when a TNR program, which is now in the works in the Cedar Rapids area, is implemented.

The majority of our phone calls at Critter Crusaders are from people reporting cats who are in desperate need of help. This is traumatizing to residents who witness the suffering of severe overpopulation as well as to our many rescues and animal welfare organizations. The Cedar Rapids City Council passed the first vote on this humane TNR program. We thank and encourage them to do the same in the next vote. We were not able to help Simba, but his plight can serve as a symbol of better things to come for the thousands of suffering homeless cats in this community.

Bless you sweet boy. You will not be forgotten.💔

09/23/2026

CEDAR RAPIDS — IT’S TIME TO PURGE FOR A PURPOSE! 🛍️🐾

Thrift for Good, a brand-new secondhand store opening soon in Cedar Rapids, has graciously offered to host a rummage sale benefiting SNIP Iowa and The Straygency before they officially open their doors!

This is HUGE for us.

We’re working hard toward our fundraising goals to open SNIP Iowa — a high-volume, low-cost spay/neuter clinic that will help make affordable spay/neuter services more accessible to community cats, rescue organizations, and pet owners in our area.

And now your fall clean-out can help us get there.

If you’ve been staring at those closets, cupboards, garages, or storage rooms thinking, “I really need to get rid of some of this stuff…” — START SAVING IT FOR US!

Gently used items donated for the rummage sale will be sold to benefit SNIP Iowa and The Straygency, turning the things you no longer need into something our community desperately does: more access to affordable spay/neuter.

📅 Date: TBD — likely mid-October
📍 Location: Thrift for Good in Cedar Rapids
📦 Donation details: Coming soon!

We are incredibly grateful to Thrift for Good for giving us this opportunity before they even open their doors. Partnerships like this mean so much to a small nonprofit working toward a very BIG goal.

So go ahead. Purge those closets. Clean out that garage. Tackle that basement. Just don’t throw out the good stuff yet.

More details coming soon!

PURGE FOR A PURPOSE. SHOP FOR GOOD. FIX THE FUTURE.

09/19/2026

🐾 BIG NEWS FOR CEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY CATS!

The City of Cedar Rapids has officially released its proposed animal ordinance, which includes new provisions recognizing community cats and permitting Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR)!

If adopted, the ordinance would establish a legal framework allowing community cats to be humanely trapped, sterilized, vaccinated, ear-tipped, and returned to their original location, subject to specific requirements.

This is an important step toward addressing our community cat population through humane population control!

📅 First Reading & Public Hearing

Tuesday, September 22, 2026 | 4:00 PM

📍 Cedar Rapids City Hall, 3rd Floor

📄 Read the proposed ordinance here:

[https://www.cedar-rapids.org/local_government/city_council/city_council_meetings/council_meeting_documents.php](https://www.cedar-rapids.org/local_government/city_council/city_council_meetings/council_meeting_documents.php)

Select the September 22 meeting packet and look for Public Hearing Item #1.

The ordinance has not yet been adopted. We'll continue sharing updates as it moves through the approval process!

🐈 Enforcing population control—humanely.

09/05/2026

Phoenix was a newcomer to a colony, and thankfully, his caretaker was paying attention. He noticed a cat he didn’t recognize, kept tabs on him, and quickly realized something was terribly wrong.

Phoenix was horrifically wounded, and in this brutal heat, he may not have survived much longer.

His caretaker reached out, The Straygency provided him a trap, Phoenix walked right in and from there, our rescue community came together.

We are incredibly grateful that Critter Crusaders has agreed to take Phoenix’s case. His injuries require care beyond our ability, and they are stepping up to give him the chance he desperately needs.

Once he is released from the hospital, SAINT will welcome Phoenix into their care for the next chapter of his recovery.

This is why colony caretakers matter. It all starts with someone paying attention. ❤️

And then it takes a village.

If you’re able, please consider donating directly to Critter Crusaders to help with Phoenix’s medical care. His road ahead is going to be a long one, but thanks to an incredible network of people and rescues, he has a chance.

One person noticed. Another responded. Another opened a door. Together, we are giving Phoenix a chance.

🔥 Rise, Phoenix. Your village is here. ❤️