The Refined Feline Provides Cat Furniture to Animal Shelter Makeover Contest Winner
The Refined Feline joined forces with Petfinder.com to promote a cat room makeover contest to animal shelters around the country. The winner would receive over $1,300 of cat furniture from our company. Out of 100′s of entries a winner was selected: Central Minnesota Animal Care and Control.
On October 24th we flew from New York to Minnesota to help Lisa Tenter, director of CMACC, and her team assemble and install their new furniture.
Tenter entered the cat shelter makeover contest because they wanted to make a communal cat room but had no funding or any idea of what furniture to place in the space. They fell in love with The Refined Feline line of cat furniture and wanted to have it as the main focal points of the room.
“This makeover will provide cats with a room to stretch, play, and relax just like they were in a home setting.” says Tenter. “The atmosphere is expected to reduce shelter stress in these cats making them less prone to illness and disease. This aspect gives them a better chance at ultimately being adopted into a new forever home. It is also expected to reduce their length of stay at the shelter.”
CMACC has on average 15-20 cats available for adoption. They plan to place 4-5 vaccinated/altered cats into the new room when it is finished.
“The shelter as a whole will benefit from the fact that more people will want to visit the shelter to see the new “cat lounge”. And many may visit more often.” Said Tenter. ” Not only is it healthy for the cats, potential adopters will be able to see and visit with free-roaming cats in a more home-like environment. Making it easier for the adopters to pick out their new friend.”
We are happy to help this cat shelter in need and we hope to run this contest annually.
The CMACC building
Their cat room before the make over
On the left: Kittens await their new cat room. On the right: Terry Tenter assembles a Little Lotus.
On the left: I put together a Refined Litter Box drawer. On the right: Terry and I install the Catemporary Cat Tower & Shelves.
On the left: Director Lisa Tenter and I stand with a Lotus. On the right: newly painted and furniture area for the cats
Before and After. I think it's a big improvement!
Your local shelter can win over $1,300 of our cat furniture
In conjunction with Petfinder.com we are running a Cat Shelter Makeover Contest where a shelter can win over $1,300 worth of our high end cat furniture products. We and Petfinder wanted to help a shelter in need so Petfinder reached out to their vast shelter network to solicit stories from rescues and shelters across the country on the state of the cat rooms.
If you have a local shelter in need of a make over, forward them the link http://www.petfinder.com/admin/ to apply.
Applications will be taken until June 30th.
New Facebook Page Added
Upload your pictures, add your thoughts, and share your stories on our new facebook page!
Kitt-In Box wins the 2008 Cat Fancy Editor Choice Award
Once again The Refined Feline is a recipient of an Editor’s Choice Award from Cat Fancy for its innovation in cat furniture design. This year it’s for the Kitt-In Box desktop pet bed.
This product came about after interviewing cat owners in their home and realizing that cats on the keyboard wasn’t just a problem I had. Others were like me; we loved our cat, but constantly had to pick them up off the desk and put them on our laps or the floor while we worked on the computer. It’s frustrating. We wanted them with us… but wished they could stay to the right or the left of the monitor… not right it front!! After observing one cat owner put a large cat bed on their desk, I had the idea to make a comfortable but stylish cat bed that can clamp on a desktop so it didn’t take up as much valuable desk space. So now you are happy you can work in peace and the cat is happy she has her own place to snuggle up in that’s still near by you.
Looks like the people at Cat Fancy liked it and I hope you will too.
Kitt-In Box 2008 Pet Product News Editor’s Choice Winner
I am happy to announce that the Kitt-In Box desktop cat bed is a 2008 Pet Product News Editor’s choice winner.
After 1.5 Years in development, working with customers and their cats, the hard work has paid off.
The Kitt-In Box is a great gift to cat owners who “have everything.” There isn’t a cat owner I know that doesn’t know what’s its like having their cat all over the computer when they type. It’s something I went through with my cat, and after I started this business and spoke to cat owners, seems they had the same frustration. Not that we didn’t appreciate our cats interest in what we were doing, it’s just we’re a tad better typists. ( Well for me.. barely!)
Check out the Kitt-In Box from The Refined Feline
New Web Site. New Features.
As a busy owner of a business, you get wrapped up in so many things and you sometimes don’t take a step back to see what you got. One day I looked over our web site and realized, wow we have a pretty ugly web site. It started out pretty nice. Nice clean design, simple to understand pages. However, after two years it appeared pictures were slapped on, text ran all over the place, and images were old. We needed a make-over.
We had a three prong strategy 1) Take better pictures 2) Clean up the site design and navigation 3) Add features consumers wanted.
So we hired a top photographer, a set designer, a pretty model, and recruited some friendly cats to reshoot all of our old cat products as well as our new products. We’re very happy how they came out. They definitely portray our products in a more luxurious light.
Our new site is easier to navigate, separating our product line from our other site’s features. Finally, we added an “Ask Our Vet” section. Our resident veterinarian Dr. Julie Pomerantz, takes questions from site visitors. Feel free to ask her questions of your own!
If you have suggestions on what else you’d like to see on our site, please let us know.
New Parent Company-Sub Brands Established
RefinedKind Pet Products is now the parent company of our four brands, including our new brands The Refined Feather and The Refined Fin.
Lotus Cat Tower featured in The New York Times
The Lotus cat tower was featured in a NY Times story published 10/11/07 in the Home section. Very cool! Click the following link to read this cat furniture review.
Lotus Cat Tower
President’s Introduction
Hi this is a new area to let our customers know what we are up to. To tell you about new cat furniture and dog furniture products coming down the line and what’s going on in pet world.
Be sure to visit therefinedfeline.com and therefinedcanine.com
Josh Feinkind
President