Fans of fusilli and felines take joy! You can carb load and assist Southampton Animal Rescue Foundation’s efforts to humanely help the area’s feral cat population in one twirled scoop.
On Saturday, February 25th and Sunday, February 26th, grab a ticket to SASF’s annual Spay-ghetti fundraiser. Your $40 donation gets you a non-expiring ticket for a full-on spaghetti and meatball dinner at Uncle Joe’s Pizza & Restaurant (42 East Montauk Hwy., Hampton Bays) with salad, Italian bread and a cupcake to boot.
Bonus: Your purchase also earns you two raffle tickets for the bountiful prize baskets offering terrific treats from local merchants, like gift certificates to Flying Point Surf, Claude’s Restaurant at the Southampton Inn and pet pampering products from Pride + Groom.
This year, SASF has also added a special live auction into the mix, too. Embrace your competitive spirit and try to outbid your neighbors for baubles from London Jewelers, Tory Burch and Dooney & Bourke bags, and rugs from Magdalena York at the live auction happening on SASF’s Facebook page all day Friday, February 24th.
Southampton Animal Rescue Foundation has long done the work of caring for the wayward cats of the East End via their Advo-cat program—and there’s a lot more to it than you might realize.
“We send our trappers out in vans. We’re like an Uber driver for cats!” laughs Nicole Tumilowicz, marketing director for SASF. “Our trappers go out and bring back feral cats to our wellness clinic, where they’re fed, vaccinated, spayed or neutered, ear-tipped and then released back to where we got them from. If we come across kittens, we bring them back to the shelter in order to find them forever homes. There are even some really great cases where we find homes for older cats, too.”
It costs up to $65 per cat to put them through TNR, but it’s a service that’s both good for the area and good for the ultimate health of the animals. According to the Humane Society, there are up to 40 million community cats living in the United States at any given time. Of them, only 25 percent of kittens born outdoors will live past the six-month mark.
“The work we do is important,” says Tumilowicz. “It’s a safe and humane way to keep those numbers under control.”
Tickets for Spay-ghetti can be purchased online here, or head on over to SASF’s Hampton Bays animal shelter at 102 Old Riverhead Road West Saturday or Sunday between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., check out the cool raffle prizes in person and say hi to the cats and dogs while you’re there (and maybe even adopt one—hey, we believe in love at first sight).
