Here kitty, kitty. The county is seeking homes for over 100 cats.
“We have 116 cats in our building right now,” said Kim Pettrey, Warren County Animal Control and Adoption Center director. “That’s more cats than we have ever had. Ever.”
The situation was created during a 40-day quarantine of the facility due to a bout of dog distemper. During that time, no public adoptions were allowed. While the dog population was reduced with the healthy ones sent to a rescue group, the cat population grew because people continued to drop them off. 
“We still accepted cats during the quarantine because they aren’t susceptible to what the dogs had,” said Pettrey. “If we turned people away and we didn’t take the cat, people would just dump them. They would be on the streets and making more babies. We don’t need more feral cats.”
Cat adoption is $65, which includes the cost to have the cat spayed or neutered. There is also a $12 rabies vaccination fee. Cats that are spayed or neutered using grant money and not county funds have their adoption fee reduced to $10 or waived entirely.
Pettrey says another stumbling block adding to the number of felines at the center is the lack of grant-funded adoptions because people will pay $10 for a cat -- but not $77.
“Paul’s Clinic is unable to help us right now because they don’t have the funds to do it,” said Pettrey. “I’ve called Dr. Young’s office to see if they could help us. She is going to call and find out if UT has any seniors that need clinical hours and there’s another teaching hospital up around Knoxville that has a veterinarian class and she’s going to call them. Dr. Young said we could use the facility on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday and get a lot of our cats spayed or neutered that way.”
The information was presented to a county Health and Welfare Committee meeting to receive the center’s monthly report. In June, the department responded to 27 calls, made 65 grant-funded adoptions and ended the month with 11 dogs and 69 cats.