Deciding to Make Maps

Since the organization has no existing mapping of the feral cat colonies, we decided to create a series of maps in order to illustrate the relationships between these locations. We removed the street names in order to preserve the anonymity of the feeding stations and to privilege focus on density and adjacency of the locations to each other and to the Merrimack River.

Designing a Symbol

Ultimately, we decided to generate a variety of objects to be distributed to the thirty-five volunteers in the feral cat feeding program. We produced a symbol that could be used to unify these volunteers and delineate them from the rest of the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society. This symbol is a tracing of a feral cat, clearly identifying the clipped ear as an indication of its relationship to the feeders. All of our objects were created in the shape of this symbol.

Making the Objects

The objects we made are as follows: pins (to be worn on the body of the volunteers), magnets (to be placed in the home of volunteers), coasters (to be placed in the home of volunteers), cling vinyl (to be placed on cars of volunteers), stencils, mouse pads (to be placed in the home of volunteers), and address markers (to be nailed to the feeding stations). Over six hundred individual objects were produced.

Our goal was to fabricate objects that could be distributed throughout the environment of the volunteers, but that also would be distributed specifically to these feeding stations in order to symbolize their connection to these locations.