74-year Old Cat Rescuer With Cancer Seeks Homes For Her 40 Cats

Here’s the kicker … she has 40 of them!

The Temple Daily Telegram reports that the woman, Mary Bonin of Rogers has contacted a good number of animal shelters and was told they were full and were not able to take the cats, her brother Dennis Cryer said.

“She loves animals more than anyone I’ve ever met,” Cryer said. “She tried to have them all fixed so they wouldn’t keep reproducing, but that gets real expensive. It just got out of control.”

Many of these cats were acquired by people simply “dumping off” their unwanted fur-babies at Mary’s residence.

“They knew she would take care of them and feed them,” he said. “They knew she wouldn’t turn them away.”

her food bill for the cats totals about $400 a month.

“Some of the cats are feral but some are tame, and there are lots of kittens as well as adult cats,” Cryer said.

8 of the cats have already been placed as barn cats.

“She (Bonin) just wants to find them homes,” McCoy said. “She doesn’t want them to starve, get sick, or be killed.”

Sisters Lila McGuire and Judy Callaway manage a good number of feral cat colonies in Temple.

“We moved here in 2000,” McGuire said. “My sister worked at Scott & White and noticed the stray cats.”

The sisters collectively decided something needed to be done and ended up trapping 37 cats. All of them were spayed, neutered and vaccinated before re-releasing the feral animals. McGuire said there are now only about two or three wild cats that remain around Baylor Scott & White Health, a hospital complex. She also said that fixing and releasing the animals is not only more humane than euthanizing them, it’s cheaper and it helps keep rat populations down.

McGuire also has dealt with a feral cat colony near an Extraco Banks location and several others on residential streets in the area of Temple.

She said she wished she could help with Bonin’s less tame cats, but she had already reached her limit.

“My sister and I work solely on our own funds,” she said. “There are no vets in Temple or Belton that do low-cost spay or neuter so we have to take them to Waco on our own gas and time. We spend so much money and there are so many cats right here in Temple.”

She said there are good people who care about animals in the area and she hopes that somewhere along the line there will be a positive response to Bonin’s adoption requests.

Information from: Temple (Texas) Daily Telegram, http://www.tdtnews.com

Sometimes love just ain’t enough.