Lapcats, Inc.

Lapcats was founded in April 2005 by Barbara Doty and Kim Dahl. When Barbara moved to Sacramento from San Diego, she was searching for a way to help animals and came upon the Sacramento County Shelter.  There were drop boxes outside the facility where people could dump their animals 24/7 with no guilt or recourse.  The shelter was falling apart.  Volunteers were scarce and the staff was disheartened-just going through the motions day by day of housing animals, adopting a few but having to euthanize the rest.  The facility couldn't keep them healthy and couldn't house the number of animals coming through the doors.  There was no vet.  There was no money.  It was awful.  With 2-year-old twins at home and another in elementary school, Barbara visited the shelter weekly both with the kids and without. She used her background in photography to take pictures of the animals, give them each a name (instead of a number), write a brief bio about them, and try to work with area rescues to get them out alive.  Sadly, with such high intake numbers, most of the animals she spent countless hours naming and uploading to the web, were destroyed.  She scheduled a meeting with the shelter director to ask what they did with cats who came down with URI (upper respiratory infection) the equivalent of the human cold.  The answer was they were euthanized.  Barbara asked WHY and the answer was shocking -- "We don't have the money, time, or resources to treat them."  With too many animals coming in, not enough homes, a community who didn’t understand or care about spaying and neutering, and a shelter without resources, Barbara knew she had to do something.  That's when she approached Kim Dahl who was the volunteer coordinator at the time, and together they were determined to help as many cats as humanly possible.  When Barbara and Kim first started their efforts, there was no name for the organization, no mission statement.  It was just two women fostering a few cats on their own and trying to adopt them into homes.  In 2005, PetSmart had a new store in Elk Grove.  Barbara and Kim approached the district manager and asked if they could work with PetSmart to house some of the shelter cats in the store. Petsmart wanted to have cats available for “walk-in adoption,” or basically to "buy."  Barbara and Kim said NO WAY. They didn't want to "sell" animals and they wanted to be able to screen adopters. They also wanted to make the right match for each cat and each family which required being part of the process from start to finish.  This was a new concept to PetSmart since historically their stores always allowed their associates to "adopt" the animals without any sort of protocol in place.  But they wanted to give it try and let Barbara and Kim work their magic!  In April 2005, Lapcats solidified their venue and started a full partnership with Elk Grove PetSmart.  They created their own volunteer base, foster program, fundraising efforts, and community presence.  There is currently a small but mighty dedicated team of volunteers working on different aspects of the organization like Grant Writing, social media, Adoption Counseling, Fostering, Fundraising, Humane Education, TNR (Trap, Neuter, Return), and Community Outreach.  Volunteers staff the Adoption Center 7 days a week and cats are rotated from foster care to the adoption center and back to foster if not adopted within a 2–3-week period.  The LapCats name and official 501C3 status was awarded to LapCats in May 2015.  Since our arrival at Petsmart in 2005, we have saved nearly 7000 cats and kittens as of December 2023! COVID changed the way communities shelter animals.  With many shelters remaining closed or having limited intake, the only option for the public is to reach out to rescues for help.  They have nowhere to turn when they find a stray, no resources to care for that animal, and many times are forced to leave the animal behind to suffer or face an unknown fate.  LapCats has been a resource for thousands of cats since COVID-helping the injured and sick, pregnant, intact (spaying and neutering), the financially strapped, the strays who were turned away by shelters-kittens, cats, seniors, sick, healthy, homeless, owned.  We do dentals, blood work, surgeries, and provide special food to cats on special diets, and medicine to cats with special needs.  We take in FIV+ cats, have successfully treated 13 cats with terminal illness of FIP.  We help those who may be blind, one-eyed, deaf, or 3-legged. Whether it be sheltering cats, community cats, cats from nefarious situations, or from unforeseen tragedies, LapCats promises to provide medical care beyond the basics to get them healthy and adoption ready.  WE SAVE LIVES!