About Us
House of Misfits Rescue, Inc. was founded on December 17, 2019 by Jen Evans. This passion started as a hobby several years ago by volunteering at a local dog rescue. What started as handling dogs at adoption events quickly escalated into organizing fundraisers and running social media accounts. That's when Billy Came into her life.
Billy formerly known as (fka) Brownie was an owner surrender at Chicago Animal Care and Control (CACC). Unfortunately he found himself on the urgent list. Luckily a foster saved him 45 minutes before he was scheduled to be put to sleep (PTS). Unfortunately, he did not get along with the resident cats and found himself in boarding. As soon as Jen closed on her house, she knew she wanted to start fostering and knew Billy deserved that chance. Quickly after moving to her house, it was clear that Billy was not going anywhere. Billy was animal reactive, had food allergies and environment allergies, the first true misfit in the House of Misfits. Consistent training and desensitizing has drastically decreased the reactivity.
From there, additional misfits came through the house. From those who had a nipping history to those with "attitude problems," they all found refuge in the House of Misfits. These tiny but mighty dogs took time to decompress and socialize, but with hard work and dedication found the perfect forever homes.
Photo Credit: PattyPixx Photography
Then in July 2019 a new opportunity emerged for Jen, learn how to bottle feed kittens. After taking a class and learning about the desperate need for short term kitten fosters, she sucked it up and applied to short term foster kittens. In August 2019, the day of being approved to foster, Jen received her first kitten. This kitten was found in an alley and had flies on and around it. He also had fleas all over his body, flea anemia, and an upper respiratory infection (URI). She was shocked when he made the night and with several days of TLC started acting like a regular kitten. He transferred to rescue and unfortunately ended up passing away from Feline infectious peritonitis (FIP).
Despite the sad outcome, that did not stop the fostering efforts. Through the rest of 2019, over 60 kittens and cats came through her care, a majority of them being bottle babies, urgent, or both. Not every animal made it, but they at least had a chance and had love and a full belly.
So after several years of rescue work and lovingly calling her house the House of Misfits, House of Misfits Rescue is officially here! The mission is to focus on dogs and cats in local (Chicagoland) open admission shelters, those who are urgent, and those who need extra TLC such as neonatal kittens, some medical and "behavior" cases. Our goal is to rehabilitate these animals and find them their forever homes. We hope you will join us on our journey to make the lives of animals a little better, no matter how long we have them.
Every misfit deserves a home.
Photo Credit: PattyPixx Photography