Purrs & Paws Rescue

10/08/2026

⚠️UPDATE 10/8: There are 4 birds who have been trapped behind netting for a few weeks. They aren't going into the traps and aren't moving. These birds need urgent medical attention. If you call , please specifically ask that these 4 birds be removed and given to the rehabbers

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In August we told you about a massive pigeon netting situation at the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal managed by the Port Authority of NY & NJ and a contractor, Bell Environmental Services, they hired to exclude and remove birds over a huge area under the bridge. The company was using traps to catch the birds and then release them. But their careless methods did not prevent a number of birds from dying and many babies from being separated from their parents.

We took in many of the birds, as did volunteers and our partners in care. In late September, we admitted one adult pigeon that had been left trapped without food or water for 5 or 6 days. By the time this bird arrived at the clinic, he was so emaciated that his organs had begun to fail. We ended his suffering humanely.

Without the constant vigilance of the volunteers on site, and the attention of the media, we are certain that many more birds would have been left to die.

We’re sorry to report that this shameful situation is still going on. We’re told that birds are still trapped behind the netting. Those caught in the traps are being left longer before release, some on the floor of a cooling area where they are susceptible to flooding and predation by rats. And some were allegedly removed from the site in a vehicle instead of being released.

If you’d like to help, please send a letter via this form: 🔗vfar.org/pigeons

You can also call the Port Authority at (201) 346-4100 to request that all pigeons be released safely into the hands of rehabbers and that the Port Authority commit to releasing all trapped pigeons within 24 hours. Please be POLITE. Any other approach is counterproductive.

Thank you for your willingness to speak up for pigeons!

10/04/2026

Hopefully there’s someone who can take her! Please read her story

Both of her front legs are broken, and she is still fighting her way through every single day. A kitten this strong should be the center of someone's whole world. Instead, no one seems to care, and she's becoming a shadow in the back of a kennel.

Marsha came in as a six-month-old stray, still small enough that she should have been tumbling over her own paws, chasing anything that moved, and falling asleep mid-play in a warm spot someone made just for her. Instead, she was found injured. Her left leg is fractured all the way through near the elbow, the pieces pushed out of place, and her right has a partial break in the same bone. No one knows what happened to her, or how long she was out there hurting before someone found her. She can't tell anyone what she went through. She can only carry it.

And her legs are only part of it. She is anemic, she is being treated for what may be an infection, and her left eye has changes that still need a closer look. Any one of those would be hard on a grown cat. She is facing all of them at once, in a body that has barely had time to grow.

A cat's front paws are how she reaches for the world. They knead a soft blanket, tap a hand for attention, and pull her up into the lap she has chosen. Marsha's are broken, and there is no lap waiting for her anyway.

What breaks your heart most is how hard she tries. She is sweet and gentle with every person who cares for her, and she does her best to act like nothing is wrong, like the pain is nothing, like she isn't scared. She keeps going through all of it with a quiet courage no kitten should ever have needed. She shouldn't have to hold it all together on her own. She should be allowed to just be little.

Almost a week has passed, and not one person or rescue has stepped forward for her. Not a single question about her, not a single "I'll take her." New York is a hard city to be small in, a place where everything rushes by and a quiet, injured kitten can slip out of sight without anyone noticing she was ever there. She is depending on someone she hasn't met yet, and every day that someone doesn't come, she gets a little harder to see.

The staff and volunteers hold her as gently as they can and give her every bit of comfort they have, and she leans into all of it. But their love is on loan. When the day ends, they go home to their own beds and their own families, and she stays behind in the quiet, a little girl with two broken legs and no one to call her own.

She is safe right now, but safe is not the same as home. She needs a person or a rescue who will see her through her follow-up care and her vet visits, and who will sit with her through the slow work of healing. Somewhere in this city is a soft place where she can finally rest, heal at her own pace, and find out what it feels like to belong to someone.

Marsha is at Manhattan Animal Care Centers of NYC (ACC). If you can adopt or foster her, or you're with a rescue that can take her in, please reach out. And if you can't, sharing her story might be what brings her to the people who can.

10/04/2026

10/03/2026

Rosalie is looking for a place to heal 🐾🤕💝

Three-year-old Rosalie came to us from a known, well-cared-for cat colony with an injured leg that unfortunately could not be saved. She recently underwent an amputation, and while the surgery was tough on this little lady, recovering in a busy shelter hasn't been easy either. 💔

Rosalie is nervous, but underneath that uncertainty is a very sweet girl who we truly believe would do best in a home. She needs a quiet place to decompress, recover, and feel safe again.

Whether you can foster or adopt, Rosalie just needs someone willing to open their door and give her the cozy home she deserves. 🏡❤️ Let's get this little three-legged girl out of the shelter and somewhere she can finally heal. 🐱💕

📍2960 Shafto Rd, Tinton Falls, NJ
📝ahscares.org/adopt
ID #123315

10/02/2026

A senior cat in a shelter learns a cruel lesson: being sweet isn't enough when you're not young anymore.

T'Challa is a 7-year-old black and white long-haired senior with a coat like a tuxedo and a name fit for a king, and for his whole life he had a home. He had a family, a place that smelled like them, and the quiet certainty that tomorrow would look a lot like today. Then his family was displaced, and his world turned upside down. None of it was his fault. He didn't make a single choice that brought him here, and yet he is the one sleeping in a kennel at Manhattan ACC.

It has been 22 days since he arrived. More than three weeks of noise that never really stops, of rattling kennels, strange smells, and unfamiliar voices bouncing off hard walls. For a cat who only ever knew one gentle, familiar place, it is too much, and he can't hide how much it frightens him. Honestly, who could blame him? Anyone would be scared if everything they trusted disappeared all at once.

The heartbreaking part is that he hasn't given up on people. When a volunteer reaches in, he presses his cheek into their palm and asks for more. But you can feel it under your fingers, the stiffness in his shoulders, the stillness of a cat who wants comfort so badly and can't let himself sink into it. He is trying so hard to be brave in a place that never lets him rest.

The staff and volunteers give him everything they can: soft words, slow hands, a few calm minutes in a loud day. That love is real, but it's borrowed. At the end of every shift, the people he leans into walk out to their own homes, and he stays behind with the noise. What he needs is something they can't give him, a place that is his for good.

He needs someone patient, someone who has loved a fearful cat before and knows that trust comes back slowly. Someone who won't take his tension personally, who will give him a quiet room and all the time he needs, and who will be there the first night he finally lets his shoulders drop and sleeps without listening for danger.

There are more than 8 million people in this city. He doesn't need all of them. He only needs one to give him a chance.

It's October now, and every day here is another day of bracing for something he can't name. Let's show New York that he exists. Somewhere out there is a home where he can grow old slowly, where years from now, long after these weeks are forgotten, he'll still be curled up beside the person who chose him and be loved right to the very end.

If you have a calm home and experience with nervous cats, please consider adopting or fostering T'Challa. And if you can't, sharing his story could be what puts him in front of the one person he's been waiting for. He is at Animal Care Centers of NYC (ACC)

10/02/2026

We feel so incredibly bad for sweet Cinnamon 💔

Cinnamon came to us as a stray after residents reported that he was trying to get inside people’s homes. We assumed he was lost, so we brought him to the shelter to be scanned for a microchip. When we found one, we were actually thrilled. His chip gave us his name, his age, and all of his owner’s information, and we thought we were about to reunite this beautiful boy with his family.

Unfortunately, after several days of unanswered calls, we learned the heartbreaking truth. Cinnamon’s owner had passed away in a tragic accident just weeks earlier.

2-year-old Cinnamon is sweet, affectionate, and so ready to have a person to love again. His dad had given him his first chance at forever by adopting him from an overcrowded shelter in NYC, and now Cinnamon is here in New Jersey looking for someone to give him another chance.

Please share Cinnamon's story. We would love nothing more than to see this sweet boy find his next forever family.

📍2960 Shafto Rd, Tinton Falls, NJ
📝ahscares.org/adopt
ID #123454

09/13/2026

New Jersey Senate Bill 384, sponsored by Senator Brian P. Stack, proposes the creation of the "Compassion for Community Cats Fund" within the Department of Health. The pending legislation aims to issue state-funded grants to local municipalities and non-profit organizations to trap, neuter, vaccinate, and return free-roaming feral cats, establishing a structured mechanism to reduce shelter intakes across the state.