LEWISBURG, Tenn. (WKRN) — Twenty-eight cats and kittens dying of dehydration and malnourishment were found abandoned Tuesday morning on the side of a busy road in Marshall County.
Nonprofit Lucky's Cat House in Lewisburg, a cats-only shelter, took them in and said one kitten has died, and the others are still being treated.
"Anger was my first emotion, just disbelief that someone would even think that this was okay," Board Member with Lucky's Cat House, Brandy Fox, said.
Fox said she received a call from 911 dispatch saying there were metal crates and plastic totes full of felines. She drove straight there to find a cat running in the road, a dead kitten, and 27 more in need of immediate medical care.
"All of the kittens were in poor health and dehydrated," Fox said. "We don't know which momma cats belong to those kittens. All of the adults seem to be fairly healthy."
Volunteers have rushed to foster the 11 underweight kittens.
"To see them so small and so tiny, and we want them to pull through," Fox said. "So we are giving them extra attention. I am actually going to be taking one of the groups home with me that are the poorer of the groups that we've got split up, so that I can provide medical care to that group."
The rescued cats and kittens are recovering in isolation rooms in an already full shelter with 155 cats.
"We are the only resource for cats in several counties," Fox explained. "We work in Marshall, Guiles, Lincoln, and Lawrence counties. We are stretched thin, like I said, with fosters and volunteers, and then we take in a lot of the hard luck cases, so like if a cat had been hit by a car over the weekend, that cat wouldn't have seen care if it hadn't been brought to us."
Fox told News 2 that as cats continue to come into the shelter for care, they are in desperate need of cat food and medical supplies.
The shelter took to Facebook Tuesday, requesting community help. Since then, they have received over $3,000.
"Donations have come in, but this is just one situation in the year that we have addressed, and we know that there is going to be many more to come, so we always need that support," Fox added.