ANDOVER – Offers to help Andover officials with last week’s discovery of 30 cats and kittens found abandoned in a trailer trickled in Friday.

“I spent a day and a half on the phone trying to get no-kill shelters to take them in,” Animal Control Officer Karin Milligan said early Friday evening. But those shelters all reported that they are between 30 to 50 percent over capacity now.

“It’s a pretty pathetic situation today. I’ve only been trying to catch a couple of them at a time now, because I know that there is nowhere for them to go,” she said.

At first, Milligan trapped and rescued 10 cats and four kittens that are between 4 and 6 weeks old. That’s all she had room for in her home.

People came in for the kittens, but not the cats.

If homes cannot be found for them and those yet to be captured, Milligan said she would have to have them euthanized.

“What’s worse? Having seven cats stuck in a crate or putting them down?” she said. Some cats are in cages, others in crates, one of which was donated along with some bedding.

“The day I don’t catch one is the day I say it’s done. Otherwise, I could sit there for months and wait to catch them all,” she said.

The felines were found in a trailer estimated to be 14 feet wide by 60 feet long.

It is on land owned by Andover Wood Products. Town Secretary Hope Peterson said Thursday that the dilapidated trailer had been scheduled to be burned down.

“It’s a pretty desolate place. Every room in that trailer has a hole somewhere for them cats to escape through,” Milligan said.

When she first visited the trailer she only saw seven cats and trapped five of them. On the second trip, there were more and none of those were the ones spotted on the first trip.

“It was just unreal. Everytime I go up there, there’s a different bunch, and I’d say, Oh my God!’

“They’ve got quite a tribe up there, and 90 percent of them are all the same color – gray tigers – but they’ve got different markings,” she said.

Anyone interested in adopting a cat or donating food and kitty litter or cages and crates, should phone Milligan at 392-1482 or Peterson at 392-1088 or the town office at 392-3302.