Hearts to Home Feline Rescue and Sanctuary will be hosting its “Crazy Cat People” Pawsta Dinner and Comedy Show fundraiser event on Saturday, February 7, 2026.
The eighth annual event will take place at the Best Western Brantford Hotel and Conference Centre, and doors open at 6 p.m.
Upon arrival, guests will have the opportunity to browse the silent auction table and enter to win different door prizes before sitting down for dinner.
The menu for the evening includes pizza, pasta, salad, garlic bread, followed by tea, coffee and dessert. While there are no gluten free options, there is vegetarian available.
As usual, comedian Chris Jarvie will serve as the evening’s master of ceremonies, and the comedy show will kick off at 8 p.m.
In years prior, the show has featured one or two comedy acts, followed by a headliner, however this year, organizers have switched it up.
“Last year’s headliner, Timmy Boyle, is returning, but this time he’ll be doing a fun, family-friendly game show called “The Feud,” said Patricia Kawamoto, chair and managing director of Hearts to Home. “It’s sort of based on Family Feud, with six teams of five drawn from the audience. It should be a really fun time because people will actually get to go and play the game, and it’s just a little bit different from what we’ve done in the past, so we’re looking forward to having some good, clean comedy.”
Hearts to Homes is a foster-based, volunteer-run cat rescue that was first started in 2016, after Kawamoto and her husband had begun fostering animals, and soon realized that the volume of stray cats was far too great.
Now a decade later, Hearts to Homes works alongside between 40 to 60 volunteers and foster homes to help care for the 125 to 150 cats that the rescue has at any given time.
“It’s still as bad now as it ever was, and so we also partner with a lot of other cat rescues out of town to help because we seem to be a bit of a hot spot here in Brantford,” she said. “We are really appreciative though because we have some vets and retail partners that help us out these days, so we’re very fortunate that way.”
Kawamoto said that at Hearts to Homes, they to try to achieve three things: provide vet care and find loving forever homes for stray or abandoned cats and kittens; help colony caretakers to feed and put community/colony cats through the “Trap Neuter Return to Field” (TNR) program; and help families with spay, neuter and vaccinations when they cannot afford it.
“On average, we spay and neuter between 300 and 325 cats a year, and then we probably bring in another 40 to 50 cats to the vet for other various care issues, so there’s always a lot going on,” she said. “On top of all of that, we have about 53 semi-feral cats that will probably stay on as permanent residents of the rescue for the rest of their lives because they’re just not adoptable.
Kawamoto went on to say that monetary funds raised during the event will go towards providing care for the rescue’s various felines and their needs.
“The money we get from this will be used for things like food and litter, but especially veterinary care,” she said. “Our veterinary costs range anywhere between $175,000 to 200,000 a year, even with the discounts we get, so this is an important event for us for sure.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
