F.R.O.G.S. hop into action
By Terry L. Wilson
Members of the Real House Cats of Scripps Ranch Facebook group created a new program to help reunite lost cats and dogs with their anxious humans – using state-of-the-art microchip scanning.
“The program is called: F.R.O.G.S., which stands for Feline Ranchers Offering Gato Scanning,” said Real House Cats member JL Nuss. “F.R.O.G.S. was made possible by the success of our Real House Cats of Scripps Ranch Cat calendar.
“This was the second year for our cat calendar. We were overwhelmed by the response, getting 151 submissions, so we had more cats than we did months on the calendar. Since we wanted to use all of the pictures, we created a larger, yearbook-style layout.”
The finished calendar featured Ms. Harley on the cover. This feline’s backyard antics were made famous in the Real House Cats of Scripps Ranch page created by Jessica Pearson. Harley’s notoriety eventually led to the idea of making a Cat Calendar. Those profits were used to benefit dogs and cats in Scripps Ranch by purchasing a portable chip scanner.
“We sold 125 copies of the calendar, raising $647. With that money, we decided to purchase a community microchip scanner that we would use to identify pets found wandering in Scripps Ranch,” Nuss said.
When the keywords “Lost” or “Found” appear on the Real House Cats of Scripps Ranch page, a member of F.R.O.G.S. will hop into action to get the cat (or dog) scanned, then reunite them with their owner.
“It is very important that once you get your pet micro chipped, to register that microchip number, otherwise the Microchip is useless,” Nuss said.
“The whole F.R.O.G. thing started because so many people were finding strays,” said Mary Lawler, a member of the Real House Cats clowder. “The Real Housecats was born out of JL’s writing stories about Harley and her litters of kittens on the website, and her finally trapping Harley and getting her and her kittens fixed and finding them homes. Soon after that, people began going to JL as a resource whenever they saw a cat that looked hungry, skinny and lost.”
JL Nuss became a resource for the community. However, when people would find a lost cat, they didn’t have any way to see if it had a chip because there wasn’t a scanner available.
Now they have a portable chip scanner and can scan the chip and find the owner. Being able to match lost pets with their owners is a unique community service.
The F.R.O.G.S. team of volunteers are Scott Chang, Christy Cowling, Lesleigh Helders, Tina Lewis, JL Nuss, Jessica Doughty Pearson, Jennifer Ott Rol, Mary Shweid and Ellen Pickering.
Visit Real House Cats of Scripps Ranch on Facebook at bit.ly/3nURn8T and Real House Dogs of Scripps Ranch at bit.ly/2N8mcds.
