Tri-Valley Fix Our Ferals (TVFOF) was founded by Kim Schaefer in 2005.

Kim's compassion toward feral cats began when she was about eight years old and a feral kitten wandered into her backyard.  Her parents had the cat spayed, and "Little Kitty" then lived in their garden for the next 15 years, arriving promptly for breakfast and dinner each day.  Though she never allowed Kim or her family to pet her, Little Kitty was part of the family – and from this experience, Kim learned that cats were as important as any other animal and could live a wonderful life, as long as their human caretakers were responsible, had them spayed or neutered, and then cared for them daily thereafter.

While studying psychology at U.C. Berkeley, Kim paid for school by working part-time at a veterinary hospital – working there and at another veterinary hospital for a total of 13 years. During this time, Kim also became involved with a group known as the Friends of Fairmont Animal Shelter and very interested in the emerging "no kill" movement.  Kim attended numerous “No More Homeless Pets Conferences” given by Best Friends Animal Sanctuary ( Utah) and saw the progress being made in animal welfare across the country.

Though Kim loved working at veterinary hospitals, she often wondered if there was anyone working on behalf of the animals that did not have guardians with checkbooks. And then, in November 2002, it became clear that her calling was to help homeless and un-adoptable animals, such as the feral cat population. With her husband Dan's blessing, Kim quit her paying job and began the most intensive work of her life, all on a volunteer basis.

On her first day of unemployment, Kim called the volunteer coordinator at Fix Our Ferals (Berkeley, CA) – and then, together with her husband Dan, started volunteering at FOF’s monthly Fix Our Ferals’ free spay-neuter clinics.  This led Kim to more trapping projects, more fostering of kittens, and eventually to the volunteer position of Feral Cat Coordinator at the Friends of Fairmont Animal Shelter (FOFAS). At FOFAS, Kim received every call regarding feral cats.  She saw that many people wanted to help these cats in their communities but did not know how.  She also noticed that tremendous effort was being put into "putting out fires" as they arose instead of looking at the root cause of the cat overpopulation issue: failure to spay/neuter cats (both “owned” and homeless).

Kim's goal then became making free spay/neuter assistance to anyone choosing to pursue a humane approach to the problem of cat overpopulation. Using the Fix Our Ferals organization and methods as a model, Kim established Tri-Valley Fix Our Ferals in 2005 and thus began the project of holding bimonthly spay-neuter clinics as well as educating the public about the importance of TNR.