Meet the Fosters
Melissa
Melissa is our current Adoption/Medical Coordinator and a Board Member. She has been involved in animal welfare and veterinary medicine for 10+ years. She lives with her boyfriend in Tucson Arizona with their pets. She specializes in caring for the tiniest, sickest felines, as well as having experience with special needs cats/kittens. Melissa loves helping our foster families learn critical skills such as giving medications, administration of fluids and even tube feeding.
Alex
Alex is the Social Media/Outreach Coordinator and Board Member. She has been involved in various ways with animal care/well-being as long as she can remember, but in the past few years realized rescue & rehabilitation is her true passion along with education to the public of cat/dog welfare/well-being. She started fostering at her first job out of college (a no-kill shelter) and loved making a difference in the tiny lives of kittens and puppies♡ Now she loves fostering kittens of all types including medical cases, those needing socialization, or any that are just plain cute and needing a temporary home! She lives in Tucson with her 2 rescue dogs and 3 rescue cats!
Cortney
Cortney is one of our Board members and has been fostering for over 15 years. She has focused on fostering cats and dogs but has also fostered other animals. She has been a dog trainer for over 15 years as well and works with adopters and rescue groups on dog training. Cortney specializes in handicapped animals, but also fosters several others. She has 2 personal cats who were both born with no front legs, several large breed dogs, horses, and more on her farm!
Kim
Kim fosters for SACR and sits on our Board of Directors. Kim’s first kitten rescue was during her teen years when someone threw a kitten out of a car window. That incident left an indelible mark on her heart. Kim is married with 4 grown children, 4 dogs, 2 foster-fail kittens (the kids took all their cats with them, so they really needed more!) When not in Oro Valley, you’ll find Kim & her hubby traveling the country in an RV filled with their pets & fosters.
Abby G.
Abby started her journey with SACR after losing her kitty companion, Alice in 2020. She adopted Simon after going back and forth between the idea of adopting or fostering. A year later, she was in a better situation to foster and had her first litter in February 2021. She has taken on lots of different kitties including medical cases, bottle babies and socialization cases. Since then she has become more active with SACR and runs our TikTok as well as took on the role as one of our Adoption Event Coordinators.
Erica & Karissa
A mother/daughter team. Our family moved to Tucson from Los Angeles a year & a half ago. In LA we worked heavily with Los Angeles Guinea Pig Rescue, the largest piggy rescue in the U.S. We fostered the unsocialized, underweight and the pregnant mamas. Karissa was the youngest (at age 8 to be allowed to volunteer.) When we moved to AZ, we really wanted to get involved with the community through local rescue. Unfortunately, Tucson does not have a piggy rescue, so we decided to turn our attention to one of our other loves, KITTENS!! We have been fosters with SACR since launching this year. We have many personal animals of our own, which we attribute to well rounded, socialized, loving kittens. Fostering is a great way for my daughter & I to work together. Not to mention how great it feels to know you saved a life and helped an animal find their fur-ever family!
Ann
I’ve always loved animals, as a young child I was lucky enough to live right next to the Zoo! When we moved away, I took it upon myself to save all of my neighborhood cats, either by returning them to their owners or taking them to an informal cat rescuer, “Carol the cat lady” who lived just outside of town. She was awesome, and I credit her for all my crazy cat lady aspirations. Today I am a volunteer docent at the Reid Park zoo and am in school pursuing my bachelors in elementary Education.
The Almond Family
My family loves animals. We both grew up with all sorts of pets including dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits and various pocket pets. We have a house full of rescued love in the form of two Corgis, Miley and Atlas and two adult cats, Jolly and Luna. In 2019 we started fostering kittens for PACC and had seven babies successfully placed in their forever homes. We decided to support a local rescue this year and found SACR. We are so happy we did and are having fun socializing babies. Atlas is out kitten wrangler, Luna makes sure they learn manners and my daughter teaches them how to snuggle. When not chasing kittens we can be found hiking, camping and spending time with friends.
Savanna
My passion for animals started at a very young age, and was heavily influenced by my mom. I started my path to becoming a veterinarian early, becoming a Certified Veterinary Assistant before graduating high school, and was given the opportunity to complete a year and a half internship at a local veterinary emergency hospital here in Tucson. I was also lucky enough to volunteer in the clinic at Pima Animal Care Center, where I saw orphaned kittens being brought in daily. A few months later I decided I wanted to try my hand at fostering neonatal kittens. I am now a sophomore at the University of Arizona, studying Veterinary Science. I have fostered 24 orphaned kittens, and I just recently decided to foster hospice cats as well. These little ones overcome so much already in their short lives, and there is nothing more rewarding than being able to provide care and love to them while they try to find their forever homes.
Rachel
My foster journey began after I bought my house. We had five litters of kittens born in our yard in a year! After helping to get them all into rescues, and doing TNR on the parents, I decided to start fostering myself. Kittens are cute, but I also love to foster adults! I live with my husband and our four rescue cats, its quite the circus!