Mike and Tanika Campbell started with Furry Friends in 2012 by starting a food collection/donation at their work. This led into volunteering to be socializers and enrolling their lab in the pet assisted living therapy program. When Furry Friends made its big move into the current location they assisted with the tear down of everything, moving to the new place, yard work, and random handy work around the Halfway House. They also helped with in person events and kept four feral cat colonies fed over the years. Currently they are fosters for our medically needy adult cats, pregnant moms, & kittens. They are very good at coaxing cats out of their shells and getting them to trust people.

They said their biggest challenge is letting the kittens go after caring for them for months! “We love every single one of them. We foster failed our 1st year and adopted feral baby Gigi” Tanika said.

Many of their favorite moments volunteering have been participating in Furry Friends Pet Therapy program, “watching the residents at memory care centers light up with joy when they brought Jake, their dog, in twice a month. Now it is watching the foster babies grow and learn to trust. They also love seeing the updates from the adopters and how the foster kitties have settled into their new homes.”

As far as their own pets go they have a senior Chihuahua and five cats! Like many of our volunteers they not only foster but also care for many pets of their own. Mike and Tanika both work for Frito lay and always bring treats in to share with the other volunteers.

For fun they love to travel to national parks like Yellowstone and Denali, and to the beach while taking a lot of pictures on their travels. Before their Labrador retriever died they mainly spent their weekends doing activities with their dog and being involved in many charity walks.

They said, “We are passionate about animal rescue and support many local charities with food donations, supplying snacks for their events… Second Chance Companions/Animeals, Mostly Mutts, Panda Paws, Land of Paws are a few of the organizations we help out. We participate in the Humane Societies Walk Run for Animals each year. Furry Friends is the only rescue we actively volunteer with at this time.”

Everyone at Furry Friends greatly appreciates all they do for every cat! They are up for any challenge and never say no when we ask them for help. They truly are a couple who devotes their hearts to our Furry friends.

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We would like to thank Jenn Hutchman for writing this spotlight. She has been volunteering with Furry Friends for a couple years and has been an amazing contribution to our team. She has fostered over 50 cats and kittens so far for Furry Friends, and not just the easy ones. She has fostered several bottle baby kittens that require feeding every two hours and has taken on some of the difficult medical cases like Monnie. She also is the lead person for our email/voice mail team, plays a significant role on our medical team and has done a number of other tasks including fundraising. For 2020 she put in about 570 volunteer hours for Furry Friends. We are so grateful for all she does.