We were lucky to catch up with Samantha Person recently and have shared our conversation below.

Samantha, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I had a job in corporate America and didn’t feel fulfilled, but couldn’t put my finger on what would be fulfilling. When I was younger I wanted to be a Veterinarian and even worked at an animal hospital, but learned quickly that I couldn’t stomach surgery and procedures. One night my husband and I were talking about what we would do if we won the lottery. I volunteered at an animal shelter where the cats were kept in small cages and weren’t able to exercise and my mom had recently had to go to assisted living and had a tiny room. My answer to the lottery question was that I would start a cat shelter with big cages so the cats had more room to move around and start an assisted living facility that had regular sized apartments. My husband said maybe I could compromise and start a senior pet program that housed senior cats with seniors in assisted living facilities. I was researching this one day and came across cage-free cat shelters, which I had never heard of. Shortly thereafter I decided that this was something I could do and 6 months later I resigned from my job and The Cattery Cat Shelter was born. Our mission is to rescue homeless cats and match them with a new family. We promote public awareness regarding the value of animals and their welfare, the dangers of pet overpopulation, and the benefit of quality human-animal companionship.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m the co-founder and Director of The Cattery Cat Shelter. I grew up in Corpus Christi, TX but moved away for several years. During that time I struggled to find my purpose, which I finally did when starting the shelter. I’ve never been one to listen when people say I can’t do something. For example, when my husband and I were talking about the timeline for starting the shelter, in answer to my 6 month time frame, he said that it would take us at least a year to open. So we opened in 5 months. We started the shelter in 2007 and quickly learned that we would not adopt our way out of the overpopulation problem in our city. I started researching how to solve the problem and learned that a clinic dedicated to spay/neuter was the only way to help. Our local Veterinarians had 6 month waiting lists to get cats spayed/neutered. I had already proposed a voucher program to help people get their cats spayed/neutered, but the full service Veterinarians were all already overwhelmed and couldn’t help. Our local Animal Control had just started a low cost clinic but they weren’t doing surgery at a high volume. When I asked for them to help me with stray and feral cats, their Veterinarian at the time said the cost would be double what was being charged for pets. He was also rude about it. That was the motivation I needed and within a month we were accepted into an ASPCA program that helped start spay/neuter clinics in areas that didn’t have one. Four months later, in 2012, we opened our area’s first High Quality, High Volume, Low Cost Spay/Neuter clinic. We have since completed over 40,000 surgeries.

Along this journey, there have always been people telling me that I wouldn’t be successful. In the beginning, other shelters and rescuers in the area literally said things like ‘Why do you think you can do this, because you put some colorful paint on the walls?’ ‘You’re just an idiot, leave cat rescue to the professionals.’ It stung, because I had no idea that the animal rescue world was so competitive since we all have the same goal. Thankfully the negativity was drowned out with support and positivity.

Along with the success of the clinic, we have had almost 10,000 adoptions. We have grown from our first shelter space of 1200 square feet to 5500 sq ft that includes the shelter and a stationary spay/neuter clinic, as well as a 33′ long mobile spay/neuter clinic. We have plans to add another 5000 sq ft building in the new year.

We have grown our online Cattery Community to over 1 million followers across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. We help improve the bond between people and their cats with tutorials and inspire people to help cat rescue in their own community. We try to be a pawsitive light!

Have you ever had to pivot?

There were actually 3 times that we had to pivot quickly in order to save our shelter.

The first time was in 2008, less than a year after we opened. Even though our Animal Control gave us a permit, they gave us the permit in error and we weren’t allowed to be in the zone that we were in. We were forced to move to a building that wasn’t in our budget that the current landlord owned. Six months later the higher rent had depleted all of our start up funds and were on the verge of closing. We met a woman at one of our events and it came up in conversation that we might not be open much longer. She ended up buying a building that we were able to use for our shelter at a huge savings over the location we had been in and saved our shelter.

In August of 2017, Hurricane Harvey was headed our way but wasn’t projected to be strong enough for us to evacuate. We spent the entire day getting the shelter ready for the storm. In the late afternoon the storm changed paths and was heading right towards us as a Category 5. We quickly switched to evacuation mode with only hours to spare. Luck was with us again as I called a Vet that had worked for us in the past and she secured a place for all 120 of our cats at the shelter she currently worked for. It was serendipitous, as they had just had a ‘Clear the Shelter’ event the prior weekend or they wouldn’t have had space for all of our cats. We got the cats loaded up in our mobile clinic and left just hours before the storm hit.

In 2020, when the world shut down for Covid, we had just moved into our current shelter that is 3 times as big as our last shelter. Expenses had increased as we had just had to hire more people. Our in person fundraisers had to be cancelled. Our other two streams of income (clinic and thrift store) were also shut down. We didn’t have any money coming in with no idea what the future held. We already had a decent following on Facebook, but had really only dabbled in TikTok and Instagram. We focused on all 3 social media platforms and quickly grew our reach on all three. We started to be more creative with online fundraisers and ways to engage people. Social media saved our shelter during the pandemic.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We built our community on social media through positivity. It’s so easy to focus on the negative, in business and in the animal rescue world. I’ve seen rescues that only post negativity and businesses that post about rude clients, etc. That might get views, but it doesn’t build community. People get fatigued by negativity and will eventually unfollow you or stop supporting. We focus on the positive and making people feel good about supporting and donating! Do we post sad stories? Yes, but it’s never to shame a person, or people, It’s framed in a way to bring people together, to help the cat, and help the cat move forward past the bad situation. We also make supporting us easy. I think many people, especially younger people, think that to support a charity you have to give a lot of money. We have $2 Tuesdays where we highlight a need of the shelter, whether that is a cat that has an illness or a special food that we need for another cat. We stress that while $2 seems like such a small amount that it couldn’t possibly help, that when our community comes together to donate, it all adds up! Most $2 Tuesdays we raise one to two thousand dollars. A week that we were fundraising for a very expensive medicine to treat 4 cats that would have died without the medicine, we raised $23,000. And most of the donations were only $2. Empowering people to make an impact, no matter what their individual contribution, saves lives.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://thecatterycc.org
• Instagram: thecatterycc
• Facebook: TheCatteryCatShelter
• Youtube: TheCatteryCatShelter
• TikTok: – TheCatteryCC