Carquinez Strait Stitchers, Girls Scouts and others help adoption center effort

If it takes a village to raise a child, as the old proverb goes, it takes a community — particularly quilters who meet at Benicia Senior Center — to provide blankets to homeless cats who are hoping to be adopted.

The effort began when Leona Edejer, president of Solano County Friends of Animals and store manager of Pet Food Express, 838 Southampton Road, was given some old fleece blankets to put in the Cat Adoption Center. “I didn’t like the way they bunched up all the time. The cats looked uncomfortable,” Edejer said.

“So I took the kennel measurements and I cut up the blankets to fit the kennels.” The finished mats are 17 inches by 22 inches.

“I added batting to make the beds softer, and I made fringe around the beds to give the kittens something to play with. The cats loved them,” Edejer said.

She discovered another bonus to the mats: they are easy to clean. “I could fit 20 mats into one load of laundry.”

Edejer went through her own collection of fabric to make more mats. “I started making mats for the Cat Adoption Center from all my scraps of fleece,” she said. “They are addicting, quick and fun to sew.”

The Cat Adoption Center is in her store, Pet Food Express, which built the adoption site and pays for food, cat litter, toys and treats for the homeless cats.

The company partners with Solano County Friends of Animals to maintain the adoption center and keep the kennels clean, giving the cats a chance to play and stretch their legs, Edejer said.

The mats worked so well that Edejer designed a pattern and asked others who sew to participate in her mission. She recruited store customers, friends and family members for the job. “My office started to look like a fabric store!” she said.

She said she was standing in line at a real fabric store, Hancock’s Fabric, with her shopping cart full of bolts of fleece when she noticed a woman who also had a collection of fleece bolts.

“I offered her my shopping cart, because my fabric was already being cut,” she said. “I asked what she was doing with the fleece, and she said that her group was making tie blankets and pillows for foster children for Christmas. I told her I was making cat mats for the Pet Food Express-Solano County Friends of Animals Cat Adoption Center.”

As the two began chatting, Edejer asked if the woman’s guild would be willing to use their scraps to make cat mats for the adoption center. The woman said the project sounded like fun and took Edejer’s business card and a stack of patterns Edejer always keeps in her car.

And she said she would suggest the charity project to her group, the Carquinez Stitchers, that meets at the Benicia Senior Center.

From that encounter, word spread throughout the center and beyond.

Now, four Girl Scout troops — 20305, 20066, 20411 and 20057 — have begun making the mats. So have the Vallejo Piece Makers Quilting Club and the Carquinez Stitchers, the two quilting guilds. In addition, several individuals sew mats for the adoption center.

In a presentation Thursday night, the adoption center’s cats received about 50 new mats made by the Carquinez Stitchers.

That quilting guild’s gift is among 200 mats that have been made by multiple volunteers since Edejer started asking for donations.

“This is the first major donation of blankets that is coming from the Benicia Senior Center,” Edejer said. “This is a community effort.”

The cat mat makers take individual approaches, Edejer said.

Many of the quilters use scraps they stitch together to make the mats.

The Girl Scouts use kits Edejer makes consisting of a pattern, two pieces of fleece and batting.

“One Girl Scout did not have a sewing machine, and she hand-stitched her entire blanket! It was precious,” Edejer said.

Other volunteers have bought fabric on their own to make the mats.

Edejer said she has made patterns available for free at the Cat Adoption Center, which she will email to those who contact her at ledejer@petfoodexpress.com.

Some of the volunteers have been among those adopting cats, she said. One Girl Scout and her family adopted a pair of brother kittens they named Cheesecake and Oreo.

“We see the difference that the cat mats have made,” Edejer said. “They love them. When we are cleaning kennels, we move the mats and the cat will ‘follow the mat.’”

When the cat gets adopted, the animal gets to keep his or her own mat, Edejer said.

“When they go home, the mats are put in their carriers, and when they get home, they have something they own where they’re sent, to help them feel at home.”