OPL provides purrfect opportunity for adoption in community event
The multitude of shelves of books may not be the first place one looks in pursuit of cute kittens, but on a recent Friday afternoon, the Oshkosh Public Library (OPL) had no shortage of sweet felines. On April 25th, the OPL hosted a cat meet and greet sponsored by the Community Cat Connection of Menasha. At this event, visitors could read and check out books about cats, make toys, play with cats, and even start the adoption process. Community Cat Connection (CCC) is an organization centered in Menasha that offers a wide variety of care for rescued felines, including opportunities for fostering or adoption.
Stephanie Strezalta is one of the founders of the CCC. While CCC is a fairly new group, she’s no amateur to working with animals and helping them find their homes.
“I spent most of my career in Corporate America, and then I retired and worked for the Oshkosh Humane Society for three years where I was their board president and very involved with the animals. I retired in December of 2021, but people and animals find you when you're in this kind of business, no matter what,” she said.
After retiring, Streltza started to see neglectful actions from other establishments. She and her former Humane Society colleague Joni Geiger decided to find a way to help solve these problems.
“Some of the shelters started turning people and animals away, so we decided to start a small organization ourselves,” she said.
According to Strezalta, the CCC volunteers help with many different aspects of cat rescue and care.
“We do everything. We rescue stray cats, abandoned kittens, pregnant mamas, and even older adult cats. We give them medical attention if they need it as well as other vaccines,” she said. “We make sure they're spayed and neutered, and then we do our best to get them adopted.”
Strezalta emphasizes other ways of helping the CCC’s cause besides just adopting.
“I would encourage students to talk to their parents about fostering,” she said. “It's really an easy thing to do, and we can always use more foster homes.”
While CCC has had public events before, Strezalta comments that this type of meet and greet at the library is entirely new to the group.
“We’ve never done anything like this,” she said. “We've done some adoption events at one of the churches in Oshkosh in late summer and the beginning of fall. That’s typically when we have a lot of kittens available to adopt, but this event is the first of its kind.”
Throughout the year, different Oshkosh Public Library assistants have the opportunity to propose an event that they think will be interesting for the public. This event in particular was planned by library assistant Michelle Graf, who was asked by members of CCC if there would be an opportunity to bring some cats to the library. Graf knew immediately that there was an event to be planned.
“The group reached out to me and asked if we would be interested in having a kitten cuddle event. So, we got in touch with them over the course of months to plan this out. We had to wait for a bit for some kittens to get old enough and be ready to play with other people,” she said.
Events like this take a lot of planning. Despite the time and effort this entails, Graf enjoys the work.
“It was fun doing research to figure out what to do because it's not just having cats at the library,” she said. “We also wanted people to make their own cat toys, so we had to try to find ones that would be good for cats of all ages, and then we had to get the supplies ready for that.”
The hard work that Graf and her co-workers put in does not go unnoticed by the library’s guests. Megan Ristow attended the meet-and-greet with her daughter after hearing about it from one of her friends.
“I’d never heard of Community Cat Connection before, so it was really neat that I got to learn about a new organization,” she said. “Plus, there were really fun activities – my daughter loved being able to make cat toys,” she said.
Public events like this at the library are a great opportunity for guests to learn more about groups in their community and subjects that they might be interested in. Strezalta enumerates the benefits of this event.
“I think it's good for the community to see what we're doing, obviously, but also just to give them an idea of the types of enrichment that they can make for the cats and the kittens,” she said. “Plus, we can talk to people about how to take care of their own pets.”
Strezalta hopes that future cat meet and greets will draw an even bigger attendance and that Community Cat Connection will continue to grow.
“Everyone needs a good snuggle and loud purrs, and it’s very relaxing to hold a little kitten,” she said. “Plus, the library has so many good books about cats and kittens and any other animals you might be interested in.”
by Dania Mian and Kathryn Scheivert
Published May 19th, 2025
Oshkosh West Index Volume 121 Issue VIII