Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society

About Us

The Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society (MRFRS) aims to improve the lives of all cats and provide support and education for the people who care about them. MRFRS was founded in 1992 in response to the 300+ cats along the Merrimack River in Newburyport. The effort our founders launched was one of the first in the nation to use Trap-Neuter-Return to improve the lives of free-roaming cats. Once all of the cats had been trapped and fixed, we fed them twice a day at waterfront feeding stations and monitored them for illness, injury, and any new additions.

In 1993, we opened our first adoption center and then, in 2003, moved to our current cageless facility. In 2000 we started offering free monthly spay/neuter clinics for feral cats, and in 2008, we launched our Catmobile program to provide convenient and affordable spay/neuter services in over 20 locations across Eastern and Central Massachusetts. 29 years later, MRFRS has assisted over 117,000 cats in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, including placing over 20,600 cats and kittens into homes and spaying or neutering over 69,000 cats on our Catmobile and at our feral clinics.