Oly Camp Kitties

06/14/2026

📣 OUTREACH TUESDAY — Quince Street Village! 🐾🐶

We are heading to Quince Street Village on Tuesday, June 16th for our monthly outreach! 💛

📅 Tuesday, June 16 · 1 pm
📍 Quince Street Village
🔁 Every 3rd Tuesday of the Month

Please note: Quince Street Village is a closed, private site — this outreach is available to Quince Street Village residents only. If you live at Quince, we will be there for you! 💛

We will have:
🥫 Wet food
🍽️ Dry food
💊 Flea medication
🪱 Deworming medication
✂️ FREE spay/neuter/vaccinate sign-ups
🎁 And whatever other goodies we can dredge up!

🐱 Oly Camp Kitties has got the cats covered
🐶 Red Rose Animal Rescue has got the doggos covered

Not a Quince Street resident but want access to our supplies and services? Check our other monthly outreach locations at www.olycampkitties.com — we have open community outreach at Franklin Street Harm Reduction Center and Sergio's Day Center every month! 💛

Questions?
🌐 www.olycampkitties.com
📧 [email protected]
📞 564-225-8155

06/14/2026

Can't we stay on the weekend?!?!?!?!?

Good Morning Cat People!

06/14/2026

🐱👖

So funny 😂😂😂

06/14/2026

Lols!!!! 😂

06/13/2026

🐱💛 Jungle update - and a big week ahead!

Yesterday afternoon Shari and I loaded up the Soccer Mom wagon with food and supplies and headed out to The Jungle with a mission: scope out which kitties are ready to come with us to our spay and neuter clinic at the Humane Society of Mason County in Belfair on Friday June 19.

Twenty. Five. Kitties. 😱🐾

A chunk of those 25 will hopefully come from The Jungle - but that will require some serious wrangling. Some of the kitties out there are skittish and need a little convincing. We were able to talk to owners and get a sense of who may be ready to go. There are quite a few kittens in The Jungle right now but not all of them are old enough yet - more will be ready in July. We will be back out Wednesday and Thursday to do the actual cat wrangling in preparation for Friday's big surgery day.

Speaking of wrangling - can I take a moment to talk about our incredible volunteer Shari? 😂💛
Shari is a cat wrangler extraordinaire. She goes so far as to pull out her phone and play recordings of cats talking to try to woo skittish kitties toward her. She is an absolute hoot. AND IT WORKS. We genuinely do not know what we would do without her. 🐾✨

Here is what next week looks like:
🐱 Wednesday June 17 - 6 cats to Pasado's Spay Station at Yelm Tractor Supply

🐱 Friday June 19 - 25 cats to Humane Society of Mason County in Belfair

That is 31 cats getting spayed, neutered, and vaccinated in a single week. 🤯💛

At $125 per cat that is nearly $4,000 invested in our Camp Kitty community in one week alone. Every dollar comes from our community of donors and we could not do this work without you.

What we need most right now at Oly Camp Kitties is financial support for clinic runs. If you have been thinking about donating - this is the week. 💛

👉 www.olycampkitties.com/donate

💸 Venmo:

💸 CashApp:

Wish us luck on Friday. We are going to need it. 😂🐾

06/12/2026

Guilty!!!!

Accurate

06/12/2026

💛🐱 Hey friends - a quick update and a small ask!

We are working on a plan to get cat litter into the hands of our Maple Court Shelter clients every month - and it looks like we may have some bites on our volunteer delivery idea! 🎉 (No pun intended. 😂)

Here is the plan: horse pellet bedding - the same stuff used for horse stalls - makes a fantastic, economical cat litter substitute. It is absorbent, it neutralizes odor naturally, it is affordable, and our camp kitty clients love it.

BUT - pellet litter works best with a sifting litter box. And most of our Maple Court clients do not have one.

So here is the small ask:
We have added a sifting cat litter box to our Chewy and Amazon wish lists! If you would consider sending one our way, we will pass them along directly to Maple Court clients alongside the pellet litter. 💛

🛒 Find our wish lists on our Donate page:
👉 www.olycampkitties.com/donate

Items ship directly to OCK HQ - no extra steps for you. Just a few clicks and a Maple Court cat gets a proper litter setup. 🐾

We appreciate you more than we can say. Thank you for making this work possible! 💛🐾

06/12/2026

🐱💛 Putting this out into the universe - we are looking for a very specific volunteer!

Every month when we head to Maple Court Shelter in Hawks Prairie for outreach, our clients ask us the same question: do you have litter?

And every month it breaks our hearts a little - because litter is heavy, we are already hauling a lot of supplies, and we have not been able to make it work consistently. Until now - if the right person is out there. 💛

Here is what we are looking for:
A volunteer willing to pick up horse pellet bedding at Tractor Supply and deliver it to Maple Court Shelter - once a month. That is it.
🐴 The product: TSC Natural Pine Pelletized Bedding - our go-to economical cat litter substitute. It works beautifully, it is affordable, and it is available right at Tractor Supply.

📦 The bags: 40 lbs each - we would start with 20 bags and adjust up or down based on feedback from Maple Court

📍 Pickup: Tractor Supply - Sleater Kinney and Martin Way, Olympia

📍 Dropoff: Maple Court Shelter, Hawks Prairie (the old Days Inn)

📅 Frequency: Once a month

💰 Cost of product: Covered by OCK - you just do the pickup and delivery

🚗 Mileage: Reimbursed if desired

One small note: 20 bags at 40 lbs each is a significant load - you will want a truck, SUV, or large vehicle with cargo space! 😄🐾

This is one of those volunteer opportunities that sounds small but makes an enormous difference to real people caring for their cats in a shelter environment. Our Maple Court clients ask for litter every single month. Every single month. They are counting on us and we are counting on you. 💛

If you are interested - or if you know someone who might be - please reach out!
📧 [email protected]

We and our Maple Court clients thank you in advance. 🐾💛

06/11/2026

🚐💛 The City of Olympia is hearing from vehicle dwellers. THANK YOU to these folks for speaking up. It is time to talk about what actually works with regard to folks having to live in their vehicles.

The Olympian recently published an article featuring C.C. Coates, a retired and disabled union carpenter living in her van in Olympia. She has appeared at multiple City Council meetings over the past several months asking for one basic thing: the right to exist legally. Her church cannot host her. Private property owners cannot host her. Current city code makes it illegal to live in a vehicle on public or private property. "You've basically legislated me out of existence," she told the council.

She is not alone.

Vehicle dwelling is not a fringe phenomenon in our community. It is a growing reality for an increasingly diverse population. Families with children. Seniors on fixed incomes. Working people whose wages have not kept pace with rents. Washington State saw a 20% increase in family homelessness between 2019 and 2020 - one of the biggest increases in the country - with families moving into vehicles in significant numbers. Washington cities have an average of 10 separate ordinances criminalizing vehicle residency - among the highest in the nation. And researchers who have studied the issue note that there is simply no place for many of these families in the traditional shelter system. So they end up in their vehicles, long term.

A family sleeping in a minivan is not a moral failure. It is a housing market failure. And the city's response of requiring people to move every 24 hours does not solve anything - it just makes stability, employment, school attendance, and access to services harder to maintain.

There is a proven model worth taking a serious look at. It is called a Safe Parking Program. Other cities have proven that this model works.

Safe parking programs provide people living in their vehicles a sanctioned, legal, safe place to park - typically overnight - along with access to services, case management, and resources. They have been operating in cities across the country for two decades.

Here is what the research shows:
🏠 Safe Parking LA has helped stabilize over 2,500 vehicle dwellers and reports a 47% success rate in helping people transition into stable housing.
🏠 Jewish Family Service of San Diego runs one of the largest programs in the country - 231 parking spaces across four lots - and documents a 40% positive exit rate into housing.
🏠 Safe parking is preferred over shelter by people who have used both. This is especially significant for older adults, people with disabilities, and families with children - exactly the populations voicing concern at Olympia's City Council meetings.
🏠 Vehicle dwellers defy the stereotypes. Research consistently shows that rates of substance abuse and mental illness among safe parking program participants are actually lower than in the general population. These are people who lost housing due to divorce, illness, job loss, and skyrocketing rents - not the caricature critics imagine.
🏠 Stability produces outcomes. When someone can return to the same safe location every night without fear of being ticketed, towed, or forced to move, they can maintain employment, keep kids in school, save money, access services, and work toward housing. The constant forced movement that Olympia's current 24-hour rule requires makes all of that harder - not easier.
🏠 Washington State data is clear. When subsidized rental housing and non-congregate temporary housing are offered to people living outside, more than 80% move inside. The barrier is not willingness. It is supply. And until supply catches up, safe parking is one of the most effective bridges we have.

Council member Paul Berendt said at the June 2 City Council meeting that there is not a place in the city where people living in their vehicles can legally park - and that he wants to be solution-oriented. Council member Robert Vanderpool expressed interest in a hosted parking model where a property owner could enter into an agreement with a vehicle dweller.

Both of those ideas have been implemented successfully in other cities. They are not radical. They are not new. They are evidence-based interventions that treat vehicle dwellers as human beings worthy of a solution rather than a problem to be moved along.

C.C. Coates has been showing up to City Council meetings for YEARS asking for compassion and a path forward. So have her neighbors. So have families with children. So have retirees who worked their whole lives and cannot afford to live in the city they built. They all deserve a real answer.

Olympia can do this. Other cities have. The research shows it works. 💛

📰 Read The Olympian's full article here:
theolympian.com/news/local/article315994311.html

06/10/2026

💛🐾 Why is spay and neuter so hard to access if you are unhoused?
It is a question worth answering - because the barriers are real, specific, and largely invisible to people who have never had to navigate them.

Oly Camp Kitties was founded specifically because we observed that people experiencing homelessness consistently struggled to access existing spay and neuter resources for their cats - even when those resources existed and were technically available to them. Here is what those barriers actually look like.

You need a kennel.
Most spay and neuter clinics require you to bring your cat in a carrier. If you are living outside or in your car, you may not have one. Carriers are bulky, hard to store, and not something most unhoused people think to prioritize. No carrier, no appointment.

You need transportation.
Low-cost spay and neuter clinics in our region are not always close or on convenient transit routes. If you do not have a car - and most unhoused people do not - getting a cat to a clinic requires either a bus ride with a carrier, a ride from someone, or access to a rideshare app that will accept a pet in a carrier. That is a lot of logistics for someone whose daily life is already an exercise in problem-solving.

You need to be able to keep an appointment.
Veterinary appointments happen at specific times, often early in the morning. For someone experiencing homelessness - especially someone dealing with mental illness, substance use, or the general chaos of unsheltered life - keeping a scheduled appointment at 7:30 am on a specific Tuesday is genuinely hard. Life intervenes. Things fall apart. Appointments get missed.

Some voucher programs require waiting in line for hours - and you still might not get one.
The Olympia area has several great voucher programs and a variety of low-cost spay and neuter options in the South Sound region. But some of those programs require showing up on a specific day of the month and waiting in line for hours - with no guarantee you will leave with a voucher. For someone without stable housing, a phone with reliable service, or a way to keep track of dates, this process is nearly impossible to navigate consistently.

You may need a copay.
Even "low cost" is not the same as free. A $20 or $40 copay is a significant sum for someone with no income. When that copay stands between your cat and surgery, the cat often goes unfixed - not because the owner does not care, but because the money simply is not there.

And what if something goes wrong after surgery?
Surgery carries risk. Complications happen - even routine spays and neuters occasionally have post-operative issues that require follow-up veterinary care. For a housed person with income and a regular vet, a post-surgical complication is stressful but manageable. For someone with no income, no transportation, and no relationship with a veterinary clinic, it can feel impossible. And the anxiety of wondering "what if something goes wrong and I cannot afford to fix it?" can be enough to make someone hesitant to say yes to surgery in the first place.
We handle that too.
OCK's care is full circle. If a complication arises from a surgery we provided, we ensure the cat is seen by a veterinarian and cared for - at no cost to the owner. We do not do the surgery and walk away. We stay in it with our clients from pickup to recovery and beyond. This relieves considerable anxiety for the people we serve, and it is a significant reason why people trust us enough to say yes to care in the first place. 💛

This is why OCK exists.
We act as a "cat concierge" - picking up cats from their owners the afternoon before surgery, giving them their own kennel lined with cozy towels at OCK HQ, transporting them to the clinic in the morning for a vet check, surgery, and vaccinations, and returning them to their owners afterward. We cover 100% of the cost. We handle the transportation. We provide the carrier. We manage the appointment. We follow up on complications. The owner just has to say yes.

In 2025 we fixed 269 cats - a 14% increase from 2024 when we fixed 235. Every single one of those cats got fixed because someone removed the barriers that would have otherwise stopped it from happening.

That is the whole model. Identify the barriers. Remove them. Show up. Stay in it. 💛🐾

Want to support this work?
👉 www.olycampkitties.com/donate
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