HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — More than 20 cats are getting some TLC at the Pet Resource Center in Hillsborough County after they were found off an I-75 exit last week.
Buddy Butler sees a lot on the job. He’s a Supervisor with Animal Control for Hillsborough County.
“I was nervous for the animals,” said Butler.
He said they got a tip about a large number of cats and found that they were near an exit ramp to go north at Gibsonton Drive, right off a wooded area.
“There was no fence line that separated that area from the interstate, so what I did is I went out there, and I contacted my supervisor and said that we need to get these cats out of here for their safety and also the safety of the citizens because if they got out there on the interstate, they were going to cause an accident,” said Butler.
In all, they rescued 25 cats. Butler explained they don’t know how the cats got there or if they were feral cats.
“Thankfully, they looked fairly healthy,” said Chelsea Waldeck, the Senior Supervisor of Volunteer Services at the Pet Resource Center.
All 25 cats were brought to the Pet Resource Center.
Waldeck said most of the cats were young, estimating their ages to be between four and eight months old.
“We’re going to give them a little bit of time, and then we’ll go ahead and evaluate them to see if they would make good adoption candidates for in the home or whether we should adopt them out as working cats, so like a barn cat,” said Waldeck.
Staff said they hope to have the cats evaluated by the end of the week, and once they go through spay and neuter procedures, they can go up for adoption.
