The Cochrane and Area Humane Society is holding a fundraiser involving cats and a quilt, or should we say, cats on a quilt.

Jaimie Anton, the Fund Development Officer and Education Coordinator with the Humane Society says the idea came from one of their volunteers.

"Laura Hadley decided that she wanted to do a special quilt to use as a fundraiser so she sent out an email to basically anybody that might be interested.  It ended up being 13 volunteers that put in literally hundreds of hours over the last nine months to create and put the quilt together."

And where do the cats come in?  "Essentially it's an oversized queen quilt and it's all different colours of cat head outlines.  They also did some pillow shams and pillows to go with it.  It's called the Crazy Cats Quilt,"  laughs Anton.  

500 tickets have been printed for the raffle and are priced at $10 each.  The quilt is on display at the shelter and anyone who wants to take a look can drop by and purchase a ticket.  Tickets are also available by calling the shelter at 403 932-2072. 

The quilt will be drawn for during the Humane Society's Christmas Open House on December 9th.

Anton says, "We invite everybody to drop by that day.  We have a bake sale, a pet market place, pet photos.   It's a fun day to celebrate the season.

Anton says the fundraiser comes at a good time because funding has been down at the shelter.  "I think for everybody it's been a tough couple of years based on the economy.   We're really fortunate that we've had people who've still supported us and donated to us.  We're really lucky in that sense, but certainly we've noticed a difference over the last couple of years as well just with the economy being tough."

According to Anton, the Humane Society shelter remains a very busy place. 

"I think we're running at about 200 animals right now,   We had a cat adoption event in September that helped, we found homes for a lot of our cats.  If anybody's looking to adopt we definitely encourage them to drop in because we still have a large number of animals that are looking for their homes or will be once they're ready to go to the adoption side."