Cat rescues? They're everywhere. And I mean everywhere—from that strip mall next to the Dollar General to someone's converted garage two blocks from your house.
Cities, obviously. Los Angeles alone has what, 200+ registered rescues? Nobody's counting anymore. They pop up in storefronts, run out of veterinary clinics after-hours, operate from PO boxes. Philadelphia's got rescues working out of rowhomes in Fishtown. Chicago's South Side has Maria (not her real name, but everyone calls her Maria) running a 40-cat operation from her bungalow. The city keeps threatening to shut her down. She's still there.
New York's different—rent's too damn high for brick-and-mortar. Most NYC rescues are foster networks. Someone in Queens has 6 cats. Someone in Brooklyn has 4. They meet at the Union Square Petco for adoption events. It works.
Suburbs sprawl differently. The rescues there occupy weird spaces: a former insurance office in Naperville, the back half of a dog grooming salon in Plano, a standalone building behind a Methodist church in Marietta that technically isn't affiliated with the church but everyone knows Mrs. Henderson got the space because her husband built their fellowship hall in '03.
Here's where it gets interesting.
Drive through rural Kentucky. That barn with 30+ cats? That's a rescue, even if Debbie who runs it would punch you for calling it that. "I just feed 'em," she'll say. She's been doing TNR (trap-neuter-return) since before it had an acronym. She's caught, fixed, and released probably 600 cats over 15 years. No website. No social media. Her neighbor mentions her to someone at the feed store, word spreads.
Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas—out there, "rescue" means someone with acreage who can't say no. They've got a barn. Cats show up. Sometimes people dump whole litters at the end of their driveway at 3am. What are they gonna do, let them freeze?
Then you've got the van people.
San Diego has this guy—drives a converted Sprinter van full of carriers, medical supplies, a portable ultrasound machine he bought off eBay. He does clinic runs to Tijuana twice a month. Brings back the worst cases. His Instagram's got 47 followers. He's saved probably 1,000 cats.
The Southwest has multiple operations running out of RVs. They follow the seasons, hit reservation lands where resources are thin. They'll set up in a Walmart parking lot for a week, do free spay/neuter, then move on.
UK's structure's totally different. They've got Cats Protection, which is massive—national charity, shops everywhere, actual infrastructure. Then you've got hundreds of smaller operations: Celia's Cat Rescue in Cornwall (one woman, 15 fosters), Sunderland Street Cats (three volunteers, no physical location), Battersea (which everyone's heard of because of location location location).
Europe's a patchwork. Germany requires registration and inspection—more bureaucratic, more organized. Spain and Greece have the street cat problem on a different scale. Athens alone probably has 100,000+ street cats. The "rescues" there are mostly feeding stations run by locals and tourists who can't help themselves. Some formalize into organizations. Most don't.
Asia's where the numbers break your brain. Turkey's got government-funded TNR in Istanbul. Taiwan's shifting from euthanasia-heavy policies to rescue-friendly ones—Taipei now has maybe 80+ registered groups. Bangkok, Mumbai, Manila—the street cat populations are enormous, the rescue operations are constantly overwhelmed, and funding's scarce.
Here's what most people don't get: a "rescue" isn't a place anymore. It's a network.
Example: "Second Chance Cats" in Portland. They have:
- A registered 501(c)(3) (tax purposes)
- A coordinator (works from home)
- 47 active foster homes (spread across three counties)
- Adoption events at two pet stores (alternating weekends)
- A partnership with a low-cost vet clinic
- Zero physical location
They moved 287 cats last year. The "rescue" exists entirely in email threads, Google Sheets, and a Facebook group.
The Gulf states, weirdly. Houston's got rescues but not proportional to its size. Same with Phoenix—massive sprawl, not enough organized rescue infrastructure.
Rural South has gaps. Drive through Mississippi, Alabama—you'll find isolated operations (one person, maybe two) but huge swaths with nothing. The need's enormous. The resources aren't there.
Most of the Midwest between the cities. You can drive three hours through Iowa and not pass a single formal rescue operation.
Can't talk about where rescues operate without mentioning the parking lot crews. Every major city's got them—people who feed colonies in shopping center parking lots, behind restaurants, at industrial parks. They're out there every night. 7pm, 11pm, 3am. They know every cat by name, by personality, by medical history.
Are they "rescues"? They'd say no. They're just feeding cats. But they're doing TNR, getting the sick ones to vets, finding homes for the friendly ones. It's rescue work without the paperwork.
There's a woman in Denver who manages six colonies—two behind a King Soopers, one at a defunct gas station, three in various apartment complexes. She's spent $40,000 of her own money over eight years. Nobody knows her name except the cats and a handful of veterinarians.
That's where cat rescues operate: everywhere someone gives a damn.