This past August, a four-week-old kitten was pulled from the engine of a car that hadn’t run in days. He’d been hiding there for three nights, ducking back in every time someone got close. By the time a good Samaritan finally coaxed him out, True Rescue’s intake window for the day had closed 27 minutes earlier.
Kristen Condit, the rescue’s director of operations, made the call anyway. “He’s just over four weeks old. He’s defenseless. He probably wouldn’t make it through another night on the ground on his own,” she said. She and Executive Director Amy Simcik agreed without hesitation, and that night, instead of going back outside, the kitten went home with a foster family.
It’s the kind of decision that happens more often than you’d think at True Rescue. In just over six years, the nonprofit has grown from an idea into one of Middle Tennessee’s busiest animal rescues, currently caring for nearly 450 cats and kittens.
A RESCUE BUILT TO FILL THE GAP
Condit and Simcik met years ago while volunteering with another rescue, one that handled criminal cruelty cases but had no way to take in the average stray or surrendered pet. Watching that need go unmet day after day planted the idea for something new.
“We were physically seeing the demand for intake in Middle Tennessee every day,” Condit said. “The rescue really came from a need for meeting the need where the need lies.”
True Rescue opened in May 2020 as a dog-and-cat rescue. Within the first year, the team realized where the real gap was: cats, and especially kittens, were arriving faster than any nearby shelter could keep up with. So the mission narrowed and deepened. Today, True Rescue is almost entirely feline-focused, one of the only rescues in the region built specifically around cats. Simcik and Condit both credit its staying power to the same “legacy” fosters and volunteers who have been showing up since the beginning.
“It’s a family group of people,” Condit said. “A core group of volunteers and fosters that have been with us from day one, and they believe the same things we do: that cats deserve better.”
HUNDREDS OF CATS, ONE FULL-CIRCLE MISSION
Between its two properties and more than 100 foster homes, True Rescue keeps close to 450 cats and kittens in its care at any given time and adopts out an average of 125 a month. Every adoption immediately opens a spot for the next cat on the waiting list, something Condit calls “a full-circle rescue.”
“Whatever animal you choose to take home, it’s one for two,” she said, “because you’re not only saving the animal you’re adopting, you’re allowing us to replace that spot almost immediately.”
That’s the model — the shelter is never empty for long, by design. As soon as one cat heads home, another moves in from a foster or a waiting list that Condit says numbers in the thousands.
WHAT’S NEXT: AN AFFORDABLE VET CLINIC AND A GROWING CONFERENCE
True Rescue’s next major goal is to open an affordable veterinary clinic for the community, offering everything from spay-and-neuter services to dental care and lab work at accessible prices. Funding is already earmarked, and the team is finishing repairs to the building before turning its full attention to the clinic. It’s a piece of a much bigger picture. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates that tens of millions of community cats live outdoors across the U.S., and wider access to spay-and-neuter care is one of the clearest ways to reduce that number.
In the meantime, the rescue’s Ultimate Cat Conference returned for its third year, Oct. 2 through 4 at Cumberland University’s Alumni Center in Lebanon. What started as an outline sketched by Condit and Simcik on the drive home from a disappointing national conference has grown into a three-day event that draws attendees from across the country. This year’s lineup brings back Jackson Galaxy for his second year, alongside behaviorist Pam Johnson-Bennett, Sterling “TrapKing” Davis, and other national names in feline rescue and behavior.
Galaxy has left his mark on the shelter in smaller ways, too. His signature wand toys are such a hit with True Rescue’s cats that staff can’t use them in the shelter’s communal rooms. “I don’t know what science or madness is behind the way the feathers are threaded,” Condit said, laughing, “but the cats go crazy.”
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
True Rescue is open 365 days a year from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., including holidays, and welcomes visitors and tours at any time. To adopt, volunteer, foster, or check current intake needs, visit truerescue.org or find the rescue on Instagram and TikTok at @truerescue. Find tickets for the Ultimate Cat Conference at truerescue.org/ultimate-cat-conference.
“Come and ask for a tour,” Condit said. “You never know, you could end up leaving with your best friend.” GN
