Feline lovers seek bigger home for cats

Some people take stray cats into their homes and care for them, but Rita Bowman and Charlie Starr decided to go a step further.

The feline lovers opened a home in Hoover just for cats a little more than two years ago, and now they’re trying to raise money to build a bigger one.

During a recent visit to the house in the Shades Mountain community, there were 55 cats living in the three-bedroom house. And they’re not caged like animals at most shelters. They roam the house freely, for the most part.

Cats are everywhere you look — sitting on the couch and in chairs, lying on the floor, perched in windowsills and on multi-level cat trees, and even curled up in a basket on top of a stove that is disconnected.

You have to watch your feet, or you’ll step on one as you walk around, and you have to be careful or some of them will try to hop in the refrigerator before you close the door.

They call it the Kitty Kat Haven & Rescue. It’s located on Marlboro Street at the end of the dead-end road, right next to the Alford Avenue Veterinary Hospital.

The 2,000-square-foot house is owned by Dr. David Friddle, one of the veterinarians at the hospital, and rented out to the Kitty Kat Haven & Rescue, a registered nonprofit cat rescue and adoption center.

The facility got started after Starr began rescuing cats that were about to be euthanized at an animal shelter in Bibb County. Every couple of weeks, he would bring 10 to 15 cats to be boarded at the Alford Avenue Veterinary Hospital until he could find them a home, Starr said.

The cats were coming in so fast that Dr. Friddle began putting them in the vacant house he had bought next door. The veterinary staff would go over and take care of them until a home could be found, Starr said.

Starr and his wife had already started working with Bowman under the umbrella of the Perfect Love Cat Rescue group, but that group specialized in finding foster homes for cats and had no facility of its own.

Finally, Dr. Friddle suggested that Starr and Bowman rent his vacant house next door and start their own facility instead of paying boarding fees to the vet hospital. Starr said he was hesitant at first, afraid he couldn’t afford it, but he and Bowman dove into the venture anyway.

OBSESSION TO SAVE CATS

“It was really an obsession of saving cats, just trying to help as many as you can,” Starr said. “I was determined not to let any cat be put to sleep.”

He and Bowman worked about six months to get their 501(c)3 nonprofit status and to get the rescue group registered, and they officially opened in October 2016. At first, it was just the two of them taking care of the cats.

Bowman had retired from a long career in retail management with Belk after being diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and works at the house six to eight hours a day, six days a week. But Starr still works as a civil designer for Southern Company and comes to the house to help clean up litter boxes at night.

But as the number of cats grew, they realized they needed help. They since have recruited five other board members and a total of about 45 volunteers. “Our fosters and our volunteers are the backbone for us,” Bowman said.

The volunteers pick a time that works well for them and come to the house to feed the cats, clean the litter boxes, vacuum the floors, wash the dishes, sanitize all the surfaces, do yard work, brush the cats’ fur and — yes — just pet and love the cats.

Having the contact with people helps the cats get socialized and ready for adoption, especially for those that were feral, Bowman said.

Most of the volunteers consider the petting time their paycheck, she said.

Andy Peters, a retired hotel manager who lives in Ross Bridge, said he and his wife typically volunteer on Wednesday afternoons and at rescue events. “It’s fun. We’re just big cat lovers,” Peters said.

Sonya Cory, another Hoover resident, said she volunteers in the afternoons on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and occasionally pops in other days. Part of her volunteer work involves going to the Petco stores at The Grove and in Trussville to help find people to adopt the cats.

Cory said she was not allowed to have cats as a kid but fell in love with them in her late 20s and loves to come help take care of those that are stray, abandoned, sick or injured.

“To me, it’s rewarding,” she said. “There’s no one else to take care of them. … It’s amazing how people will do so much more for dogs than they will for cats.”

Plus, if you’re in a bad mood or depressed, taking care of the cats and giving them affection can be therapeutic, she said.

240 POUNDS OF LITTER A WEEK

But it’s definitely a lot of work. The average cat owner may have two cats to feed and clean up after, but imagine taking care of 45 to 55 cats.

Each week, the Kitty Kat Haven & Rescue goes through about four 16-pound bags of dry cat food, about 90 cans of Friskies treats and about six 40-pound pails of litter, Bowman said.

Thankfully, most of the food is donated by individuals, she said. When they start getting low on something, they post on their website or Facebook page what they need, and people respond.

“It is wonderful what people in the community have done for us,” she said.

The group also pays $1,000 per month in rent, and utilities can go up to $500 per month, she said.

The nonprofit has received a few small grants, but most of the revenue comes from donations and adoption fees, she said. The $99 adoption fee they charge doesn’t even cover the cost of spaying or neutering, deworming, shots and testing for diseases, she said.

The group in 2018 held two new fundraising events: a 5K Meow-athon and 1-mile Whisker Walk at Veterans Park that raised $10,000 in April and a Katztoberfest event in October at Tortugas Homemade Pizza that netted $6,000, Bowman said. Smaller fundraisers also are held during other months.

CRUISE SHIP FOR CATS

Life at the Kitty Kat Haven & Rescue is like a cruise ship for cats. Dry cat food is available at all hours of the day, and there are lots of toys, cat trees for climbing, scratching posts, specially-built window perches and staircases, and even a cat-size exercise wheel similar to a treadmill for kitty workouts.

The cats have a screened-in porch in the back, which Starr said is their favorite place. They love to go on the “catio” and watch the squirrels and chipmunks in the yard, he said. “For them, it’s like watching “Animal Planet.” They go into hunting mode,” he said. “But the patio is as close as they get to going outside.”

Every morning, they get a can of wet Friskies food as a treat when Bowman arrives.

“That’s a sight to see,” she said. When she arrives, “they line up at the window looking at me like they’re starving, but they’re not.”

Some cats that wind up there already have names, but the staff names the ones who don’t. For example, Taco was found next door to a Mexican restaurant, and Pizza was found in a garbage bin at Slice Pizza. 

People who adopt the cats, of course, are free to rename them, but they are asked to sign a pledge to keep the cats indoors and not declaw them, which Bowman said is considered animal abuse by some in animal care and rescue.

The three bedrooms of the house have special purposes. One is for cats taking special medication, such as for an eye problem. A second room is for cats on a special diet, such as if they have a kidney problem, and a third room is the calm room, for those cats who need more quiet space. There also is a camper parked outside that is used as an intake facility for cats who have not yet been to the vet for disease testing.

AVOIDING CATFIGHTS

With multiple cats, there are sometimes hissing fits and small catfights when cats invade one another’s space, but “we haven’t had any knockdown, drag-out fights,” Bowman said.

She did learn the hard way not to get in the middle of a catfight with her hands, she said. She got bitten doing that.

Smell is always a concern, and the cat smell is evident the moment you walk in the door, but Bowman said they keep odors down by keeping the house well-cleaned and sanitized. They use the same deodorizer that vet clinics use, and it kills 99 percent of bacteria and germs, she said.

But the most effective odor control is making sure the litter boxes are cleaned out routinely, she said. There are 15 giant tubs spread around the house, each about three times as large as a typical litter box. Volunteers scoop each one at least four times a day and completely change the litter out and scrub the tubs every other day, Bowman said.

They try to keep the number of cats in the house down to 45 but sometimes will go up to 55, she said. “We don’t want to overcrowd. If you overcrowd, you run the risk of disease, stress or fighting.”

Twelve cats have died at the house due to sickness, Bowman said. They were cremated, and their ashes are kept in boxes on display in a curio cabinet.

FINDING 'FUREVER' HOMES

Since October 2016, the Kitty Kat Haven & Rescue has found homes for more than 1,100 cats and kittens.

“It’s just grown more than we could have ever imagined,” Starr said. “It’s just really amazing.”

Some cats are adopted in less than a day, but one cat that tends to nip at people when petted has been there since the place opened, Bowman said. “Not everybody wants a cat that nips.” 

The average stay is about a month, she said.

Starr and Bowman hate when they have to turn cats away because they are full. They want to build a bigger facility. They have a plan for a 3,000-square-foot home that would have five bedrooms or salons, each with its own screened-in “catio,” as well as a sick room and exam room.

They believe the new house and a parking lot would fit nicely on two vacant lots next to the current house, if Dr. Friddle agrees to it, but they’re also open to other property. The estimated cost is $200,000, and they began fundraising in January, Bowman said.

They also are planning a partnership with a new cat café opening in Avondale called Gatos and Beans. The owners, Kelli and Stephen Steward, plan to keep about 20 cats in the café and make them available for adoption through Kitty Kat Haven & Rescue, said Kelli Steward, who works at Alford Avenue Veterinary Hospital. If they can get the financing and renovation work done as desired, they hope to open in March, she said.

Peters said he greatly admires the work that Bowman, in particular, has done.

“She is just so passionate about what she does,” he said. “I don’t know how she does it.”

Bowman said that, since she was diagnosed with cancer, the work with Kitty Kat Haven has been the perfect thing for her, helping keep her mind off her diagnosis. When she was growing up, her mother was very afraid of cats and never let her have one, so she would find feral cats to feed, she said.

She now has 10 cats at her home in Helena, including six that came with her from South Carolina about 10 years ago. Her husband won’t let her add any more, she said. “Thank God he loves cats. I would have never married the man if he had not.”

She has written two children’s books from the perspective of one of her cats, Miss Dixie, telling stories of cats’ survival through difficult times. The proceeds go to Kitty Kat Haven & Rescue. Miss Dixie has a Facebook page with more than 25,000 followers.

Some people call Bowman the “crazy cat lady,” but she’s OK with that, she said.

Starr, who said he has more cats at his house in Inverness than he would like to admit, said he realizes he and his cohorts can’t save them all, “but I feel like we’ve made a pretty good dent.”

To find out more about Kitty Kat Haven & Rescue, or to adopt, foster, volunteer or make donations, visit kittykathavenrescue.org.