16 shelter cats were dumped on a rural road. This woman’s mission is to find them all.
In late November 2016, a couple dumped 16 shelter cats out of a car along roadsides in Johnston County and left them to fend for themselves.
Some of them, like Achilles, wandered into new homes, thanks to luck and feline charm. One of them, Sugar, couldn’t last outdoors and died on the ground .
But ever since that night, Kathy Kamins and a team of volunteers who call themselves “Team Garner” have sought to rescue the stragglers, luring them with traps set along the rural roads.
Their work has been mostly successful. After a year and a half, four of them remain unaccounted for: Chomper, Frogz, Prissy and Sasha. All four are spayed or neutered. Two of them, Chomper and Sasha, have microchips.
But Kamins, an animal advocate in Harnett County, keeps up her determined search. She continues to regularly post Craigslist ads showing their pictures.
“I believe they will come home,” she said. “As long as I’m still rescuing, they have a chance.”
Animal abandonment
In 2017, Tamara Perez-Lazaro, 46, of Willow Spring pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge of animal abandonment and received a 10-day jail sentence, for which she was given credit for time already served. Terry Ray Beasley, 45, of Benson, got a similar sentence. (He currently is in prison on unrelated habitual felon charges.)
Prosecutors said the cats were dumped on Cornwallis Road near Interstate 40 in Garner, not far from Perez-Lazaro’s home. Most of the cats came from the Cumberland County Animal Shelter, officials said then, according to a News & Observer story.
They said Perez-Lazaro had an agreement to take them on the condition they be sent along to new homes or reputable shelters. But the shelter had concerns that cats were being hoarded, and they said they were dumped after Beasley moved in.
In the early weeks after the cats scattered, Kamins and volunteer scoured the area around Cornwallis Road, setting traps with sardines, sometimes crawling through bushes.
The cats had a range of challenges to contend with outside — from being declawed to relying on medication. Kamins and Team Garner worked without a break to round them up, recovering nine of them within six weeks.
“It’s one of the most horrible things I have been through with animals,” she told The News & Observer in 2017.
A happy ending
One of the missing cats, Achilles, turned up shortly after the cats were dumped, scratching at a nearby door. Lucky for him, another stray cat was loose in the neighborhood and a neighbor had food out.
“This little cat came running up on our porch, and he was trying to get the food,” said Gail Banes-Davis. “I said, ‘Oh, look, we’ve got another cat.’ ”
But Banes-Davis didn’t know the story behind her new cat, and Kamins and the team didn’t realize Achilles had been discovered until April, when Banes-Davis took him to a vet and discovered the microchip.
By then, he had a new name: Grady, with the middle name Mischief.
“Because he’s whimsical,” Kamins said.
She hopes the four missing cats met the same happy fate as Grady. But until she knows, she keeps up the search.
Want to help?
Contact Kamins at 919-889-0085 or email KathywithaKtheonlyway@yahoo.com.
This story was originally published August 2, 2018 at 2:03 PM with the headline "16 shelter cats were dumped on a rural road. This woman’s mission is to find them all.."