When Nancy Engel found two pregnant cats between her home and her mother’s house in Frankenmuth, Michigan back in 2004, she had no idea she was about to start a shelter that would change the lives of 3,000 special needs cats over the next two decades. The day Engel’s mother Joan Purzycki passed away, both cats delivered their litters totaling 11 kittens, and Engel pulled the babies away from their mothers after three and a half weeks to bottle feed them every two to three hours, worrying about being overrun with feral cats. After she took the kittens to their first veterinarian appointment, word of her unusual situation spread throughout the community and she started receiving calls from people asking if she could take in more kittens, which is how Pet Angel Adoption & Rescue was born. Today the nonprofit no kill shelter at 380 List Street operates entirely on donations and volunteers, specializing in finding forever homes for the cats that other shelters struggle to place including those with heart conditions, bonded pairs that must be adopted together, cats that don’t get along with other animals, overweight cats, shy cats, and elderly felines needing extra care.
Engel now runs the shelter alongside her daughter Abby Kreger, who grew up surrounded by rescue cats and says when asked as a child how many pets she had, she would always respond “We have a cat shelter” instead of giving a number because they were all her pets. The shelter is divided into four free roam rooms that Kreger calls apartments where similar cats are housed together, plus tall cages called condos for cats that prefer solitude, and an isolation room for sick, healing or newly arrived cats until they’re healthy and adjusted. Pet Angel currently houses 18 adoptable cats and only accepts cats from other rescues that fit their specialization when they have openings, never taking cats directly from the public except to take back cats previously adopted from them. Engel and Kreger want more people to know about their unique shelter so that cats requiring two vet visits a year or daily medicine can find families willing to put in that little extra work, because behind every meow, playful paw and loving headbutt, each special needs cat deserves a loving home.
