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The women behind Cats of San Bernardino save hundreds of feral cats every year
By Nathalie Basha San BernardinoPUBLISHED 5:00 AM PT Dec. 21, 2022
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — They have a gone super-viral on social media because of their work saving cats in Southern California, but behind the Tiktok videos are two Los Angeles natives with big hearts for cats.
Jaina Spagis and wife Ivy Spagis have turned their suburban San Bernardino home into the central hub of Cats of San Bernardino, their nonprofit group that works to relieve the growing number of feral cats on the streets of San Bernardino.
Through feeding programs, adoptions and trap/neuter/return programs, the couple have helped nearly 1,000 cats since 2019. It’s documented on their social media pages, which has garnered the pair millions of views.
The San Bernardino Sun
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On a muggy Tuesday evening, Jaina and Ivy Spagis pulled into a shopping center on San Bernardino’s east side and parked near an enclosed dumpster behind the building.
They popped the back hatch of their electric-blue RAV4 with vanity plates reading “CATS SB” and began filling cardboard bowls with dry and wet cat food, pulling from a 22-pound bag of Meow Mix and assorted cans of Friskies. They poured water from a 5-gallon jug into a clear Tupperware bowl, then carefully placed the bowls on the ground behind the dumpster.
One by one, their charges quickly emerged from bushes, a ditch and the alleyway behind the shopping center — a colony of about 30 feral adult cats and kittens of various breeds. They cautiously made their way to the bowls of food and water and began eating heartily.
“They’re everywhere,” said Ivy Spagis, president of Cats of San Bernardino, a cat rescue she and wife Jaina, the organization’s vice president, started in 2017. They obtained nonprofit status in 2019.
