Bringing Happiness and Food to Homeless Felines
By Jamie Zimchek
Panama City Beach’s population of homeless cats might be some of the luckiest felines prowling the streets. Why? They have Molly Grady, the founder of the non-profit, Street Cat Society, to thank. It all started one day when Grady, a former home inspector by trade, went to a retail store and saw a few scrawny kitties that clearly had no humans to call their own. “So I put some dry food on the curb,” explains Molly with a chuckle that hints at what came next. “Then this cat had kittens, and so they needed a little house, and then the kittens got bigger so they needed a duplex… everywhere I went there were cats.” So Molly Grady decided to do something about it. She started by getting all the cats in different colonies spayed or neutered, and she also began to feed them daily. “I feed them regularly every morning so I can monitor them, and they’re all vaccinated and healthy,” she says. This is no easy undertaking: right now, she maintains assorted homeless cat colonies that together number roughly 100 felines across Panama City Beach.
But that’s getting ahead of the story. Three years ago, Street Cat Society formally became a non-profit, and in the meantime Molly has been busy. Initially, not all businesses were thrilled to have their homeless cat populations “encouraged.” “At first I had to be incognito,” Molly explains. But when business owners saw the results, they were won over, and now she has full permission to do what she does at each location.
One day, while she was working her other job at a local retail store, a customer noticed the black cat painted on Molly’s shirt and they fell into conversation. Fast forward slightly, and Melinda May, that customer, now advocates for the Street Cat Society by donating her time to manage PR for Molly and the Street Cat Society (visit them at instagram.com/streetcatsocietypc or facebook.com/StreetCatSocietyPC to see her handiwork). It takes Molly six hours a day and costs her 24 thousand dollars a year just for food and medical care, not counting spaying or neutering costs and housing, which doesn’t leave her much time beyond her regular working hours and daily cat feeding hours to promote the cause. “Because I’m spending all my time with the cats and then work, I’m not people-connected,” she explains. Thanks to Melinda’s efforts though, they are slowly getting the word out to the community.
Molly doesn’t want to stop here either, she has bigger objectives. “My goal is to start cat havens. I need to start with one here – I moved into an area where there are hundreds of homeless cats and I’m trying to get these cats fixed and taken care of. There’s no reason they cannot be taken care of onsite,” she says. “They’re not a nuisance to anybody, and they’re perfectly happy and content.” Of course, they all need adequate shelter and need to be fed every day, but the cats in Molly’s care? “My cats are all fat, sassy, happy, and healthy,” she quips with satisfaction. “I pick up where the TNR (Trap-Neuter-Release) leaves off. I do the TNR as well for the cats I take care of, but I go beyond that.”
Since the Street Cat Society cats are happy and healthy where they are, Molly needs not new human homes for them but other kinds of help to keep her mission alive. In addition to welcoming any funding for food and medical costs, she really needs volunteers to help her feed the cats and build shelters for the colonies. She also needs someone able to render a drawing of an upgraded cat haven; currently most of the shelters are cobbled together from styrofoam coolers, tarps, and duct tape. With a rendering of a proper shelter made from actual building materials in hand, Molly could apply for grants to help her expand and also give her the resources to be able to service calls from people who find strays in need of medical care or a cat colony to call home. Interested in giving these cats a paw up? Reach out to Molly Grady on Facebook, Instagram, or via email at streetcatsocietypc@gmail.com. It just might give you the “purr-pose” you’re looking for in 2022.
