How It All Happened

Street Cat Rescue was founded in June 2006 by Donna Powell after acquiring 16 cats in her care through her Trap, Neuter, Return (TNR) efforts. She was originally not a cat person and always rescued birds and dogs. She quickly realized she had a passion for helping these street cats that had no one to help them and learned she could actually help the overpopulation problem by TNR. A hands-on approach if you will. It all started with a skinny black cat later named “Kitty Mama” who became the matriarch of Street Cat Rescue. Kitty Mama and her three black kittens are what started it all for her.

Two of the kittens were trapped, tamed, and adopted out and the third kitten, “Frankie” was way too wild as he was the last one trapped and was already several weeks old. It was decided he would be returned to live out his life with his mom. Frankie is featured on our front Webpage in the photo “Frankie in the Bluebonnets”. Sadly, after a few short years, Donna found him after a holiday weekend, passed away. It was concluded it was a heart defect. Kitty Mama lived most of her life out in the field and buildings across from Donna’s workplace until she was about 13. She would then go live with Donna in her home for the last three years of her life. She had a few litters before Donna met her and Donna TNR’d several cats in a large area surrounding her workplace and would feed daily after work at various feeding stations.

Donna would go on to TNR hundreds of cats over the next several years. But early on, she realized many of these cats were stray dumped or lost cats and there were many kittens that needed a chance to be in loving homes. She wanted as many kittens off the street. Thus, Street Cat Rescue was born. As she always stated, “these cats exist through no fault of their own and they deserve a chance at life”, be it by TNR’ing and making sure they were fed daily or by taking them in for a chance to be adopted into loving homes. Many cats needed medical attention from fighting or injuries from cars, or from illness. She knew she could not financially do this on her own. Not being a cat person, she still felt driven to take this road less traveled. Her journey was like the “Purpose Driven Life” and her life was forever changed.

She and her organization have helped hundreds of cats from sickness, injury, and illness or by adopting them into loving homes or providing a safe place to live at the infamous “Cat Ranch” on the Founder’s property, for the elderly, disabled, or special needs. Thousands more were helped by her TNR efforts of training people to trap (or trapping herself) and preventing unwanted kittens from being born and stopping the unwanted reproducing.