Meow Mission, the nonprofit cat welfare group, is scrambling to find homes or caregivers for cats left behind as a Mishawaka trailer park is cleared to build new homes.
Habitat for Humanity has bought the Oak Grove Trailer Park at McKinley and Byrkit with plans to clear the dilapidated trailers and help people build new homes there. Almost all of the humans have found new housing elsewhere but Meow Mission President Jodi Aker says at least 35 cats remain.
Most of them are “community cats,” meaning they live outdoors but rely on people to feed them, while about a dozen of the cats had lived with people in the mobile homes but have been abandoned.
"They have been relying on residents their entire lives," Aker says. "They do not know how to fend for themselves, so what's going to happen is they're going to be dispersed throughout the community and often will not survive because they do not know how to take care of themselves."
Aker is asking cat lovers to step up.
"Someone that has a little bit of property that could have a barn for them, or a garage, or even a shed so they could get some shelter. And for those super-friendly ones, we would love it if there would be some community members who would step up and adopt them as pets.
"The park residents and the park managers know who these cats are and they're very familiar with them. They all have names, they all have personalities, they are very well loved."
Aker says most of the cats are already spayed or neutered because Meow Mission has trapped, spayed, neutered and vaccinated about 150 cats at the park since 2018.
