Tucked away behind miles of dirt roads in the stillness of High Springs, Michelle Collister provides a safe haven for cats.
In her backyard, Collister runs For The Love of Grace Animal Rescue, a no-kill shelter that currently houses about 50 cats who have been abused, neglected or abandoned. Some have been diagnosed with illnesses that will force them to live in the rescue forever, while others await adoption.
Using her husband's power tools and buying her own lumber and materials with money from her retirement account, Collister, 58, built the shelter with her own two hands so she would be able to house more cats.
But building the shelter was just the beginning. Now Collister has started a fundraiser to help provide for the cats because she is running out of money to support them. Last year, she estimated she spent more than $500 a week on food, litter and standard visits to the veterinarian.
“I need help. I need help in so many spaces, and I'm only one person,” she said.
Despite not having experience with construction and limited funds, Collister built three cat houses, including patios and scratching posts.
“I just started putting the wood in the ground and started building,” she said. “When you have a passion for something, you just do it.”
While the rescue has been established for six years, she has been taking care of cats for nearly thirty years.
Collister originally lived in Lake Worth, where she cared for a colony of more than 100 cats in a large field behind her local Publix. Those cats were all strays, abandoned, dumped or born there, she said.
The overpopulation of stray cats is not a problem in just one county— there is a serious surplus of them throughout the county and state.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimated there are between six and nine million stray cats in Florida.
Franziska Raeber, the director of development at the Humane Society of North Central Florida, works closely with trap-neuter-return programs in Alachua County.
She said the program has been helping with the population of feral cats, specifically in Gainesville and Alachua County.
Raeber also said rural areas face more trouble with cat overpopulation and access to veterinary care.
“It's really rough out there, and animals are often on the lower priority list,” she said.
Throughout her time in cat rescue, Collister has seen the ugly side of it. Collister described the horrors she saw, including a cat who was shot by a BB gun, one with its tail ripped off,and another with a broken hip.
“I didn’t realize what evil I would see, ” she said.
Because none of the cats were spayed or neutered, the colony of cats multiplied. Collister visited daily, feeding them and taking them to the veterinarian to get sterilized.
At one point she says she had 32 cats running around her house.
After losing her job as a part-time bookkeeper, Collister and her husband relocated to High Springs. She brought the 32 cats with her and planned to go back for the other cats in the field.
Whenever there is a vacancy in the shelter and a cat from Lake Worth is experiencing medical issues, it is transferred to the rescue. For this to happen, Collister’s husband drives down to south Florida to coordinate with Connie Christensen, one of the shelter’s board members.
Christensen, 67, still lives in Lake Worth and looks after the cat colony still living in the same field.
Caring for those cats was something Christensen shared with Collister. Now it’s mostly her and her husband. Christensen said she’s out there every single night, making sure the cats are fed and have fresh water. She worries about the cats because the field is located next to a busy street with heavy vehicle traffic.
She cited the trap-neuter-return programs, initiatives which help stop the overpopulation of feral cats, as an important step for controlling cat reproduction. But, she said there needs to be a better solution to permanently relocate them to safer locations.
“I can’t lay in bed and think they’re out there. It's not their fault,” she said.
Despite her dedication to controlling the population by spaying and neutering, the cat colony doesn’t shrink because people regularly dump their cats there.
“It’s very cruel how humans can be,” she said. “I wish I would’ve taken up knitting or something because it’s killing me.”
But even with the love and passion Christensen has for the cats, she said the financial burden is getting too heavy. She shared that one of the most recent cats she trapped took her two months to catch, and cost her $900 out of pocket at the veterinarian.
“We can’t keep going,” Christensen said. “We need exposure. We need funding. People need to be aware.”