Saving Lives: Local Rescue Works To Find Homes for Cats & Kittens

Last year, Kitty Kottage saved more than 600 cats and kittens.

In the 11 years since the Dothan feline rescue was founded, thousands of cats and kittens have been saved. The nonprofit’s volunteers foster mother cats and their kittens. They nurse injured and sick felines back to health. They transport homeless kittens to larger cities where state spay and neuter laws have actually created kitten shortages.

Calls come into Kitty Kottage daily from people who have found a cat with kittens on their property or a stray in a local parking lot.

Co-founder Cheri Hannah says Kitty Kottage wouldn’t be able to do what it does without dedicated volunteers who work at the rescue or foster cats and kittens in their own homes. Hannah points to a box on her desk filled with names of foster volunteers.

“They all are lifesavers,” Hannah says. “Every single person that’s in that box is a lifesaver, because without them, I could not rescue the number of kittens that I do.”

Hannah and Kitty Kottage were recently honored as Silent Heroes of the Wiregrass. The program, created by Wiregrass Electric Cooperative and WTVY, recognizes people and groups who work to make the area a better place. Each month, a new silent hero is selected and awarded $1,000 from the cooperative’s Operation Round Up Foundation.

The $1,000 cash award has already gone toward Kitty Kottage’s veterinarian bill, which Hannah says can run up to $5,000 a month.

“We take in critically injured and ill kittens all the time,” Hannah says. “We take in a lot of heavily pregnant females. We take in a lot of mama cats with small babies, but we move a lot of cats, too. We just have to keep moving them so we can save more.”

Hannah co-founded Kitty Kottage with Glenda Dennis, and neither of them has ever taken a salary. Kitty Kottage has a small paid staff that helps with giving medicine, feedings, laundry, and vet trips. Cats are kept in different rooms depending on their status — mother cats and their kittens are in 1 room, cats healing from surgery are in another room. Each new cat is quarantined before being exposed to the others.

The rescue quit doing direct adoptions a few years ago, but starting in February, Kitty Kottage’s rescued cats will be available for adoption at PetSmart in Dothan.

Kitty Kottage does 2 to 3 transports a month, each with 15 to 20 cats and kittens that have homes waiting in a new city, Hannah says. Adding local adoptions should help the rescue free up more shelter space.

Hannah says the number of local animal rescues makes adoption a difficult way to deal with overpopulation.

“Dothan is not a very big city, and we can't adopt our way out of pet overpopulation,” she says. “The only way to control the pet population is to spay and neuter.”