Volunteer
If you love cats, you will enjoy volunteering with The Rescue House! Every cat we rescue is unique and precious to us and we do all we can for each one. And we ALWAYS need volunteers to help us do that. Whether you would like to help by fostering cats in your own home, taking care of the cats in one of our adoption centers, helping to raise funds for the kitties and supporting fundraising events, or a myriad of other ways – we need you! We cannot do what we do for the kitties without our wonderful volunteers. We hope you will explore this information about the different ways to assist us, fill out the online volunteer application, and get started helping the kitties! Our organization operates in San Diego County, CA.
Areas where help is always needed
Foster Care – You can welcome these special cat(s) into your home and know that, when they are ready, we will take care of finding them their forever home. In the meantime, you get to love and enjoy them.
Adoption Center Visits – Visit and care for the cats and kittens in our Adoption Centers on a regularly scheduled basis. Here you can ensure the cats are comfortable and well-cared for while spending time loving them, feeding them, playing with them, etc.
Fundraising & Public Relations – Help plan special fundraising events; talk to people and businesses that might be able to donate funds to The Rescue House; spread the word.
Kitty Transportation – Help us transport kitties from vets to adoption centers, between adoption centers, etc. This is on an as-needed basis.
Adoption Fairs – Help us during our big Adoption Fair weekends; held every 2 -3 months. There are many ways in which you can assist at this event – setting up the enclosures, transporting the cats, feeding and cleaning, introducing people to our special kitties during the fair, tear down, etc.
Administrative Assistance – This covers a wide variety of tasks that are vital to the running of our organization. Some of these tasks could be on-going and some as-needed – but all necessary.
Fostering Cats
Would you like to help save lives and provide cats a chance for a life of love and care that they otherwise may not have? Would you be willing to share your heart and home with very special kitties that need you? If you are in San Diego County and would like to help foster cats and/or kittens on an on-going basis in your home, PLEASE join us.
Fostering cats is a wonderful, heartwarming experience. You are giving the cats you foster a chance for a new life; a loving life; a caring life that they might not otherwise have. Rescued cats come from all kinds of circumstances and very often need time in a loving home environment before they are ready to be adopted. Some have just lost the only home they have ever known. Some are ill or injured. Some are recovering from surgery. Some are pregnant. Some are too young. Some have been abandoned and have been living outdoors, doing the best they can to fend for themselves. There are a plethora of different needs and different cats that need assistance – but they all have one thing in common – they all need care. They all need loving foster homes. And we need you so we can help them.
What does fostering entail?
The Rescue House takes care of all the medical expenses for our foster cats. We look to our foster homes to provide them the food, the litter, sometimes chauffeuring, and always the love. As a foster home, you will have a person guiding you and available to answer questions that may come up. We provide a workshop and comprehensive notebook for each new foster home, covering many of the aspects of cat foster care and of The Rescue House. If a foster home has resident cats, we find it best to have a separate room for the foster cat(s), where they can find comfort and safety – and so the resident cats are comfortable as well since not all like to share their home. And when your foster cat(s) are ready for adoption and space is available, they are welcomed into one of our Adoption Centers. From there, when adopted, they will join their new guardian family in their forever home. We will incorporate the knowledge you have gained from caring for your foster cat and use that information about personality and preferences to do our best to ensure that the forever home is a good fit for that particular cat. And you will know that the cat(s) you have been fostering will now have a life of love and care and comfort – because of you.
Fostering is a very rewarding experience and we would love (be delighted) to have you join us. Please fill out a volunteer application. And enjoy reading Why We Love to Volunteer!
Adoption Center Caregivers
One of the best ways for new volunteers to get involved is by becoming an adoption center caregiver. Once cats are ready for adoption, the adoption centers are what it’s all about! By donating a few hours of your time once a week, you can make an enormous difference and help many cats on their journey to a forever home.
Instead of having one central location, we have five adoption centers located 
throughout San Diego County. Caring businesses such as Petsmart and Petco provide us with space inside their establishments to house our cats while they are waiting for their forever people to find them. The public visibility and the cats’ exposure to potential adopters are crucial to our success as a rescue organization.
Of course, while they are at those locations, the cats need care. Rescue House volunteers go into each adoption center every day for 2-3 hours at a time to provide both physical and social care for the cats. In addition to the basic necessities of feeding, scooping litterboxes, and cleaning enclosures, volunteers socialize with the cats and give them the opportunity to play, claim laps, stretch, and win hearts. Volunteers also engage with visitors and facilitate interactions with potential adopters and, if an adoption application is submitted, send it to an adoption counselor who will then contact the applicant.
How does it work for the individual volunteer?
We ask that volunteers commit to 2-3 hours once a week. Each adoption center has a lead volunteer who oversees operations, and training is provided. Once training is completed, you would be assigned a scheduled shift where you come in on the same day and time each week. We are all volunteers, and as such we are flexible and strive to find a regular day and time that fits both your schedule and the needs of the adoption center. Since the cats cannot take care of themselves and are completely dependent on us, it is very important that our volunteers are reliable about covering their scheduled shifts. We ask that new volunteers expect to be able to volunteer for at least 6 months. Many of our volunteers have been with us for years!
In the adoption centers you will get to help many cats and be a part of their adoption journey at the stage when they are ready to find their forever homes. It is extremely rewarding and we would love to have you join us. Please fill out a volunteer application. And enjoy reading Why We Love to Volunteer!
Fundraising
Just like many other non-profit organizations, The Rescue House relies on fundraising activities to help absorb the many expenses we incur to help drive our mission. In addition to our annual Cause for Paws fundraiser gala that is usually held each summer, we strive to hold other smaller but just as important events throughout the year. We need volunteers who are willing to help with such things as:
Event coordination- Donation procurement
- Creative design for advertisements, programs and decorations
- Marketing/Outreach
- Event day volunteers
More Ways to Help
It doesn’t stop with just the need for foster homes or adoption center caregivers or help with fundraising; that is just the beginning. We rescue a LOT of cats each year and with that comes a lot of oversight, management, tracking, communication, chauffeuring, planning and on and on and on. Here are just a few more ways the cats of The Rescue House need assistance – and there are many, many more. Please consider special skill sets you have and other ways you might like to assist, fill in a volunteer application – and let us know how you would like to help the cats!
Kitty Transportation – help us transport kitties from vets to adoption centers, between adoption centers, etc. This is on an as-needed basis.
Adoption Fairs – help us during our big Adoption Fair weekends; held every 2 -3 months. There are many ways in which you can assist at this event – setting up the enclosures, transporting the cats, feeding and cleaning, introducing people to our special kitties during the fair, tear down, etc.
Administrative Assistance – this covers a wide variety of tasks that are vital to the running of our organization. Some of these tasks could be on-going and some as-needed – but all necessary.