Are you a cat lover?

Here is the place for you, Eden Animal Haven outside of Brighton, MO. I went to see Leslie Sawyer at Eden for this month’s column, a wonderful place for cats of all sizes, ages, and breeds. I love going there to get my cat fix.

Leslie is totally amazing; she holds down a full time job and still manages the rescue. She also works evenings and weekends helping with all the rescue chores, doing adoption events, working with vendors like Chewie and Petsmart on grants and simply anything else that comes along. And she knows every one of the 80 (sometimes 90) resident cats by name! Leslie tells me that in addition to the residents, there are also 70 foster cats being taken care of by kind foster parents in the area. All of them are waiting for their own home, but in the meantime, they are being spoiled.

You may recall that I wrote about Eden some time ago and Leslie had shared her plans to improve and enlarge the rescue. And guess what, she has done an awesome job! There are still individual rooms for the different cat(egories): kittens, seniors, quarantined, adults, FELV cats and everything in between, but they all now have access to their individual catios – enclosed outside areas where

To learn more about Eden Animal Haven visit their Facebook page: they can sun themselves, play, get exercise in a wheel and be sociable with others. Leslie says this creates a low stress environment for the cats.

She is currently working on remodeling a barn where feral cats can stay. These cats do get vaccinations and are spayed and neutered, but they are not used to humans and therefore not available for adoption. I can’t wait to see this shelter area.

The biggest accomplishment in 2022 was when Eden took in 17 cats that lived with homeless people in an area in Springfield that needed to be vacated for pending construction. Unfortunately, the cats couldn’t go with them. Leslie and her staff rescued the 17 cats, took them into the rescue, where they were evaluated, spayed and neutered, received vaccinations and whatever medical attention they needed.

In order to keep them isolated from other cats, they had to use one of their offices and remodel it into another cat room. They have since been named after nuts and seeds, socialized and there are now only 10 of these homeless cats remaining, 7 have been successfully adopted. These cats, including many kittens, were in remarkably good shape when they came to Eden – Leslie gives the credit to the homeless, after all, these were their pets. Leslie being the kind person she is, also kept the homeless appraised of the cats’ progress and where possible, any updates.

As you can imagine, adding the cats from the homeless camp to