Building a home online for Brittany Niemi Rescues

Brittany Niemi runs a cat rescue near Regina with more than thirty cats in her care. Food, litter and vet bills are paid out of her own pocket, along with donations from people who believe in what she does. She deserves a lot more attention than she gets, so this first post on our blog is about her.

How I found her

I came across Brittany Niemi Rescues while I was looking to foster cats myself. Her available cats were listed on Facebook, scrolling past between everything else in people’s feeds. If you wanted to adopt or foster, you had to dig through posts and send messages to find out who was still looking for a home.

My husband and I drove out to meet her and her kittens. We were surprised to find she rescues pigeons too. She takes in cats and kittens of every age and condition: bottle babies, seniors, and the ones who need extra care. She is completely overrun, and she still never says no to a cat in winter, because on the prairies in winter, no means death.

Why I had to help

I have been in her position. Back home in India, my husband and I took in cats, had them fixed, and either adopted them out or released them, in a country where a lot of people see cats as pests rather than pets. I know how much of yourself that takes, and how little time it leaves for anything else, like building a website.

Brittany had already bought her own domain, bnrescues.com. What she needed was a site that made it easy for adopters and fosters to find the right cat and reach her, without adding a single new bill.

What the site does

For adopters and fosters:

• Every adoptable cat in one place, filterable by age group (kittens to seniors and special needs), sex and status, with search and sorting.
• A page for each cat with a photo gallery, their story, personality tags, and whether they are good with kids and other cats.
• Bonded pairs are marked, so cats who have to go home together do, and one application covers both.
• Adoption and foster applications online. Adopters can apply for several cats at once; fosters can pick a cat or say they are open to any cat that needs them.
• Light and dark mode, and it works well on a phone, which is where most people will find it.

And a private admin for the rescue, so Brittany never has to ask me to update anything:

• Add and edit cats and upload their photos.
• Review adoption and foster applications, and choose which inbox they go to.
• Schedule meet & greets, with calendar invites that open in Outlook.
• Record adoptions, and keep a roster of fosters with every cat they have cared for.
• Edit the home page headline and intro herself.

The two kittens listed on the site right now, Tony and Rony, are my own foster kittens from Brittany. So when I tested the adoption pages, I was writing about two little troublemakers who were wrestling on my couch at the time, and I wanted their pages to do them justice.

Built to be fast

Most adopters will open the site from a Facebook or Instagram link on their phone, maybe on patchy mobile data, and a slow page is a page people close. I built it with Next.js, a modern way of building websites, so that:

• Pages load almost instantly. They are prepared ahead of time instead of being built from scratch every time someone visits.
• They stay up to date anyway. When Brittany edits a cat or one gets adopted, the site updates right away, with nothing extra for her to do.
• It works well on any phone. Visitors download very little, so it is quick even on a weak signal.
• People can find it on Google. Every page is set up so a search for cat adoption near Regina can lead to her, and links shared on social media show a proper preview.
• She can run it herself. Adding cats, uploading photos and handling applications all happen in her own admin, so she never has to wait on me.

The hardest part: where it lives

Building the site was the fun part. The real challenge was finding a home for it. A site like this is more than pages: it needs somewhere to keep the cats and applications, somewhere for photos to go, and a way to send email. Most hosting for that comes with a monthly bill, and every dollar of Brittany’s money or her donors’ that goes to hosting is a dollar that cannot go to food or a vet visit.

So I set everything up on free plans from Cloudflare and Brevo, two well-established services:

• the website and the rescue’s private admin
• the records of every cat, application, foster and adoption
• every cat photo
• emails, sent from her own bnrescues.com address

A small rescue uses only a tiny fraction of what those free plans allow, so there is plenty of room to grow before anything would ever cost money.

The only thing Brittany pays for is her domain. Everything else costs $0 a month.

Launch day

I started building on October 14, 2026, and bnrescues.com went live on October 27, thirteen days and thirty commits later. Launch day itself was busy: moving everything onto the free hosting, connecting her domain and email, adding dark mode and bonded pairs, and fixing the last few things you only find on a live site.

I am so proud, as a developer, to be able to make a difference with what I know how to do. I cannot take in thirty cats. But I can make sure the people who want to adopt or foster one of Brittany’s cats can find them in a few taps, and that the rescue never pays a cent for it.

How you can help

• Meet the cats at bnrescues.com, and adopt or foster if you are near Regina.
• Follow Brittany Niemi Rescues on Facebook and share her posts.
• Donate if you can. The rescue runs on Brittany’s own money and donations, and every bit goes to food, litter and vet care.
• Share this story with someone who loves cats.

If you run a rescue, a non-profit or a small business and the cost of software has been holding you back, get in touch. Budget is something we can work around together.

— Ami