A Message From The Founders
Dear Puffy Paws Family, August 2026
We have some very big news to share with you! We have been working incredibly hard behind the scenes to rebuild and update our new website (www.puffypaws.org) from the ground up, and we are finally ready to pull back the curtain. Our old website, www.puffypawskittyhaven.org, is officially being retired.
Over the years, prices change, logistics shift, and our sanctuary has evolved. All of the vital information we need to share is being carefully transferred over to our brand-new digital home, which has been redesigned to accurately reflect our current, real-world costs and daily operating expenses.
When you look at the new pages, you will see that our sanctuary population is down to 120 cats right now. We want to be completely open with you about why we are at this number. Over the last two years, as our precious kitties passed away from their afflictions, Chrissy and I sat down for a very serious, heartfelt talk. We looked at each other and realized that to give these vulnerable souls the absolute highest level of medical care and emotional devotion they deserve, we had to set a firm limit.
We decided that 120 is the magic number of cats and open slots we can safely handle. Rather than refilling all the kitty slots like we used to, we chose to let our population naturally settle into this perfect headcount.
As you know, every single one of these 120 residents is a special needs feline dealing with Feline Leukemia (FeLV), FIV+, neurological disorders, or extreme senior ailments, alongside our fragile nursery crew of growing kittens. To keep them healthy, we use an immense amount of premium products, and our new site breaks down those exact consumption numbers down to the penny—including the 1,200 pounds of litter and dozens of cases of medical-grade food we cycle through every single week.
Seeing these current numbers helps explain a second major transition we are making at the Haven. Many of our long-time donors remember our old routine of getting the Phillips Wholesale truck or coordinating massive pickups at Publix to bring back piles of food and heavy bags of litter. While that system worked for a long time, it is no longer possible for us to maintain.
The truth is, Chrissy and I are getting up in age, and the intense physical labor required to load, transport, unload, and stack thousands of pounds of supplies every single week has simply become too much. Compounded by my ongoing heart problems, handling those massive physical loads is no longer safe for my health. To keep us both safe and ensure we can focus our remaining strength where it matters most—hands-on hospice care for our residents—we had to eliminate the heavy lifting entirely.
Additionally, we ran into a major storage bottleneck. Our local Publix simply did not have the physical warehouse space required to hold the massive volume of litter our sanctuary goes through. A standard retail stockroom simply cannot keep up with a sanctuary that processes 1,200 pounds of litter every single week just to keep our free-roaming rooms spotless.
Because of these life transitions and space challenges, we have completely streamlined our supply pipeline so everything comes right to our doorstep! By shifting entirely to digital streams, supporters can purchase the exact nutritional formulas and litter we need directly from our online wishlists, and the delivery trucks bring them straight to the Haven.
To help us buy local emergency cleaning or fresh supplies without forcing us to handle heavy logistics, we have also set up an E-Gift Card program for Publix, Walmart, and Amazon. These digital cards give us immediate flexibility to restock sanitation supplies without paying massive shipping fees on heavy items.
Every single page across our entire new website has been completely updated to perfectly reflect exactly what we use, cycle through, and need to survive on a day-to-day basis. We have laid out the current math transparently across the board, explicitly showing how our operating pages and monthly expenses naturally increase and decrease depending on the changing medical and daily demands of our residents.
This makes it beautifully clear and incredibly easy for you to see the real-world scale of our mission and see how we keep our nursery shelves and hospice bowls steady.
We are deeply grateful for your understanding, your flexibility, and your continued dedication to our vulnerable cats.
This new website and delivery system protects our health as we get older, honors the memory of the kitties we've lost by keeping our care focused, and ensures our 120 beautiful residents never miss a single meal.
With all our love and deepest gratitude,
Rick, Chrissy, & Da Kitties
