Today, on National Feral Cat Day, we highlight one of our community partners, Spirits Place, and share how we work together to support Maine’s feral cats.
Spirits Place
Spirits Place is a cat rescue and sanctuary located in St. Alban’s Maine. In addition to offering feline adoptions, they advocate for feral cats, assist community cat caretakers with resources and even take in feral and working cats to live on their spacious campus.
Feral cats are those cats who received little to no human socialization in the critical first weeks of life. Thus, they are not well-suited to be family pets as they do not have a bond with humans and feel uncertain in their presence. However, feral cats appreciate the warm companionship of other cats and tend to live in groups (known as colonies) outdoors.
Dedicated human caretakers (like at Spirits Place) provide cats in feral colonies access to food, fresh water, shelter from predators (often an outbuilding or small shed) and veterinary care. With proper care, feral cats live long, meaningful, peaceful lives outside.
Feral Cat Colony
The best way to manage a feral cat colony is to spay or neuter each cat and make sure they’re healthy. Fixing the pets eliminates unwanted litters, which would grow the colony exponentially and cause resource scarcity, disease and other issues. Thus, Spirits Place’s partnership with AWS ensures Spirits Place cats are properly spayed/neutered, vaccinated and healthy.
Several times a month, a team of four from our own Community Veterinary Clinic travel two hours from AWS to Spirits Place to perform spay or neuter surgeries on cats in their care, right at their facility. Spirits Place is in a rural part of Maine without enough veterinary resources, including licensed veterinarians and technicians. Thus, while they have space in their facility to perform surgeries, bringing professionals to them makes all the difference for the cats in their care and the greater community of feral cats in Somerset County.
“When you walk into the sanctuary, it is such a peaceful space with lots of cats free roaming both inside and outside the facility. Seeing how many cats we provide surgery to each day and knowing they will have a happier and healthier life bring joy to us.”
-Amber Wyman, AWS Licensed Veterinary Technician
Since our partnership with Spirits Place began in March 2025, our team has made 13 trips, completing 350 surgeries in that time! We are grateful for the partnership and the opportunity to support the care and wellbeing of Maine cats who need us most.
AWS also offers local spay/neuter surgeries, humane trap loans and other resources to feral cat caretakers in Southern Maine.
