Welcome to Happy Cats Haven! We are a non-profit rescue and adoption center for homeless cats and kittens in the Pikes Peak Region of Colorado Springs. We are a Feline Friendly Shelter and guarantee safe haven for all cats we take in.
We believe that cats are valuable, lovable and trainable, not disposable. Feline Friendly means we treat our cats as individuals–with respect, compassion and positive reinforcement–to make their stay as stress-free as possible until they are adopted. We give both our cats and our adopters the gift of time, so everyone can relax and show their true personalities. Each adoption matches our deep understanding of our cats with their new families, handcrafted for a feline lifetime.
The gift of timeHappy Cats Haven is the kind and gentle shelter where cats stay safely until they find their homes. Our cats come from all walks of life, stripped of everything they knew and loved. We give them time to recover from the trauma of losing their homes and time to show their true personalities to our loving staff and volunteers. Research shows that cats in unfamiliar environments can be so scared their behavior is the same as a completely unsocialized, feral cat. It can be several days, if not weeks, before their true personalities emerge.
Based on our Five Cat Wishes, we try to look at the world through their eyes, using play therapy and clicker play to help regain their confidence and rebuild their bonds with people. We take the time to get to know each of our cats and kittens, noting their personalities, petting, play and scratching preferences.
Hand crafted adoptions
We house most of our cats in comfortable colonies where they can express natural cat behavior, based on the Five Freedoms. Since they live with other cats, we learn about those relationships too, matching them carefully so no one gets bullied. Cats often make good friends with other cats here, so we nurture those friendships and try to find homes where they can be adopted together. You’ll never have better kitty friends than two siblings raised together, so we always try to help keep them together too.
Adopters receive the gift of time too, taking all the time needed to get to know our cats before you make a choice. Your best feline friend can be a 15-20 year commitment, so we want to make sure you have the right one. Along with our cats, we take the time to get to know you and your family, including all your animal companions. This helps us to find the best cat for you and the best family for our cats. We have placed over 1,800 cats and kittens since we started and our adopters can testify to those happy placements.
They’re not saved until they stay
At Happy Cats, a forever home is the goal for each of our cats and kittens. Cats are not hardwired for community living, especially with other cats and dogs who start out as strangers to them, so we know that perfect match can be tricky. That’s why we don’t stop at adoption, but support our adoptions with regular follow-ups to make sure everything is going smoothly…over 1,500 calls and emails in 2016. Plus, we offer ongoing support with classes, online advice and referrals to our behavior consultant that continue long past adoption. Our adoptions are no-fault. If we need to take back one of our cats, our Happy Cats Safety Net is here for them, no matter the circumstance.
Why choose Happy Cats?
We guarantee safe haven for all cats and kittens we take in. In animal shelter terminology, we are limited admission because we are not mandated to take in every cat. However, we rarely turn away cats for less adoptability, including orphan kittens, seniors, special & behavioral needs. We only euthanize those animals who are too ill to survive and those with serious behavior problems, which is known in common terminology as the no-kill philosophy. However, we have never euthanized a cat for his or her behavior, as we have been able to rehabilitate all our traumatized cats so far.
A Feline Friendly Shelter
More importantly, we back up our commitment to taking in cats and keeping them until they are adopted by being a Feline Friendly Shelter. We make every effort to recover every cat from the trauma of being abandoned. We are not a sanctuary, so our goal for every cat is to find him or her a suitable forever home. We do not resort to euthanizing for treatable illness, behavior or special needs. We use feline friendly handling, training and play to ensure that our cats are as adoptable as possible and do everything we can to make sure each cat stays adopted.
We turn away an average of 15 cats a week, so even though our cats and kittens are safe, there are always lines of cats waiting to come in who are not. Every cat or kitten you adopt from Happy Cats saves two: the one you take home and the one waiting on the other side of our door to come inside.
Cats are lovable, not disposable
When you adopt a free cat or kitten, your expenses are just beginning. These include vaccinations and spaying or neutering, for starters. If your free kitten doesn’t get fixed, he or she will be contributing to the 10,000+ cats who go homeless every year in our area, condemned to freezing, starvation and making more kittens to also live short, desperate lives.
Our cats and kittens go home with most expenses already covered. Their adoption fees go toward paying for those expenses. We offer discounts but do not give away our cats or kittens. Research shows that people make irrational decisions when getting something for free. We are looking for adopters who know that a cat is a 15-20 year commitment. Making cats worth nothing perpetuates the notion that cats can be discarded if anything goes awry. Click here to read about the great signing bonuses that come with our cats and kittens.
TNRCare
At Happy Cats, we are committed to making life better for all cats. All our cats are spayed or neutered before adoption to help reduce our community’s feline overpopulation rates and stop the cycle of suffering. We also contribute to our area’s Trap-Neuter-Return activities with our TNRCare program. When funds are available, we assist our local Humane Society with TNR support, including surgeries, food and shelter for our outside cats. This is not our mission, but aids our mission by reducing the number of outside cats so more family pets can be saved. Every spayed or neutered cat prevents hundreds if not thousands of needless feline deaths in our region.
Thanks to our donors & volunteers
We are a non-profit organization, so it’s because of our loving donors and volunteers that we can give our cats—and our adopters—the precious gift of time to make that lifetime match. We wouldn’t be here without them…and neither would our happy cats and kittens!
