Rutherford County Cat Rescue on a Mission to Find Fur-ever Homes for Local Felines

Since Rutherford County Cat Rescue became a 501(c)3 in 2015, its small group of volunteers have spayed or neutered hundreds of stray cats, contributing to a large reduction of cats in the county animal shelter and preventing several thousand occurrences of euthanasia.

Irma Lowe, Renee Rosson and Jennie Joslin started the group in 2014.

RCCR primarily aims to spay and neuter cats, said Colleen Bowles, who has volunteered with the group since 2015. The effect of spay and neuter multiplies.

In 2014, Rutherford County Pet Adoption & Welfare Services, the animal shelter known as PAWS, adopted out 382 cats, and 65 percent of the cats—or 1,617—that were brought in were euthanized, according to a PAWS report from that year.

In 2018, PAWS’ euthanization rate fell to 5–6 percent, according to Lindsay Frierson, public relations and media specialist with PAWS.

The cat rescue organization provides support to PAWS when cats need specialized care, and helps with surgeries and medical treatment for cats found injured or sick.

“PAWS can’t take on little kittens [who are not yet weaned] or cats that are not adoptable for whatever reason,” Bowles said. “They just don’t have the means to do this and so they have reached out to rescues to try to help and to help with those mamas that come with babies.”

In 2018, more than 1,000 cats brought to PAWS were transferred to the care of rescues.

“We are able to save animals when we have someone who can assist us and also help when an animal is sick,” Frierson said.

Most of RCCR’s focus is on wild cats.

“We seek donations through GoFundMe and we also have a PayPal link,” Bowles said. “A lot we will do comes from requests for help. Like a time a lady found a kitten behind a warehouse who was less than six months old and whose leg was broken in three places. Unfortunately, it was too much to try to repair the leg and it had to be amputated. We do several of those over the course of a year and the cats are fine afterward— cats are resilient. We post to our Facebook page asking for donations and telling them the situation, and we have had great responses from the community. This is how we run.

“The cats can’t speak for themselves so we try and help them,” Bowles added. “We mainly do TNR, which is trap, neuter, release. We have four or five volunteers who work on this in their spare time. We run off our Facebook page. We get tons of messages each day, from people needing to re-home their cats. We can’t help with this because we don’t have a facility. We help when people find a cat and don’t know what to do with it [or] find kittens or find a bunch of strays in their area and want help in trying to control them.”

She says they work with various other organizations in the community to find homes for these cats. Several of their rescues go to PetSmart for adoption, and RCCR has also partnered with Catfeine Cat Cafe, which opens April 5 and is a place to socialize with cats you can adopt. Cats can also be viewed and adopted from the RCCR Facebook page.

There is a need for adoption of adult cats and senior cats. Adult cats are great because they have already established their personalities, Bowles said. Senior cats are good for older adults who want company and not the most active kitten. Right now there is an 8-year-old cat named “King” listed on the RCCR Facebook page who is a good cat, and one the group would love to find a good home for.

King, available for adoption