Last August, 10 Petfinder.com shelters and rescue groups received $1,000 grants from Blue Sky Soda and the Petfinder.com Foundation. Here's another story about how the money is being used to help pets in need.

Save A Pet, a rescue group in Dothan, AL, has a straightforward mission: To promote the adoption of homeless pets and to encourage spay/neuter through education and lifesaving programs. It does not have a physical shelter; rather, Save A Pet transfers pets from the local shelter, finds foster homes, holds adoption events and transports pets to less-crowded shelters.

In August, Save A Pet received a $1,000 grant from the Petfinder.com Foundation and Blue Sky Soda and put the money toward vaccinations and transport. While many pets benefited, one dog in particular stood out.

Deanna, a young Boxer mix, was pulled from the crowded City of Dothan Animal Shelter and vaccinated against bordetella. She was then transported to the Humane Society of Tampa Bay in Florida for its adoption event "Passion for Pets."

Pam Backer, director of shelter operations at HSTB, saw Deanna at the event. "She pranced around and made everyone smile," Backer says. "Everyone wanted to adopt her."

Ten Petfinder.com shelters and rescue groups recently received $1,000 grants from Blue Sky Soda and the Petfinder.com Foundation. In honor of National Feral Cat Day, we're spotlighting one grant recipient, Neighborhood Cats, Inc., a Brooklyn, NY-based rescue group using its grant to provide foster and veterinary care for community cats in need, such as formerly stray kittens Watson, Simon and Holmes.

This summer, Neighborhood Cats went to Williamsburg, Brooklyn to begin a trap-neuter-return program on a group of cats living in an alley. Within the group were three kittens: two tabbies and their tuxedo brother.

"At seven weeks old, all three were pint-sized tough-guys-in-training," says Susan Richmond, executive director of Neighborhood Cats. "With no humans to look after them, they had to be street-tough just to survive."

The adults and older kittens in the group had grown up outdoors and were too wild to be adopted. They were spayed and neutered, given exams and rabies vaccines, then returned to their home in the alley where feeding stations and snug, all-weather shelters had been set up.

The young kittens -- now named Watson, Simon and Holmes -- were fearful of people too, but still young enough to tame, so Neighborhood Cats arranged for a foster home for them. Then they began the slow process of socializing the cats.

Ten Petfinder.com shelters and rescue groups recently received $1,000 grants from Blue Sky Soda and the Petfinder.com Foundation. Here's the first in a series of stories about how the money is being used to help pets in need.

Violet is a sweet Boxer and the new mother of a litter of puppies. Found dangerously thin, the dogs were taken from their home as a cruelty case by animal control officers in Phillipsburg, NJ. S&L Animal Rescue, also in Phillipsburg, took Violet and her puppies in to nurse them back to health and find them homes.

"They were so infested with worms, we didn't know if they would make it," says S&L cofounder Lisa Diacik. They did. Thanks in part to the grant from Blue Sky Soda and the Petfinder.com Foundation, the rescue group was able to put Violet and her pups on high-nutrient food and milk supplements.

"We only have one puppy left, who is now 10 weeks old. The others were adopted last weekend," Lisa says. "They will all have happy endings now." (Visit Violet's Petfinder page, and her still-adoptable puppy Pippa's.) But Violet and her puppies aren't the only ones benefiting from the grant.